Entry · catalog no. 1210
mess
/ /mɛs/ /MES
noun · Southern Black communities, carried north to Chicago and Harlem · 1920s
✓ Verified
1.
Something excellent, striking, or admirable — praised with a word that on its face means disorder.
“That second set they played was a mess.”
2.
A person who is a handful in the best way.
“Your grandmother is a mess and she knows it.”
3.
An unspecified quantity or category of stuff.
“Don't bring that mess in my house.”
4.
Talk that isn't worth hearing.
“He stood there talking mess for twenty minutes.”
Origin & Attribution
Southern Black speech, carried north by the Great Migration. Zora Neale Hurston records the dismissive sense in 1921, and the praising sense — the inversion that makes the word interesting — is on record in Lil Hardin Armstrong's 1936 Decca side "It's Murder," eight years before Calloway or Dan Burley printed it in their jive glossaries. Green's Dictionary of Slang marks four separate senses of this word as US Black. Style writing tends to date the admiring use to the 2000s vogue for "hot mess"; that is roughly seventy years late, and it keeps the disorder while losing the admiration.
1921
Hurston records the dismissive sense in "John Redding Goes to Sea"
1936
Lil Hardin Armstrong sings the admiring sense on "It's Murder"
1944
Printed in both Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary and Burley's Handbook of Harlem Jive
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Southern Black communities, carried north to Chicago and Harlem · 1920s
Spoken by
Black Southern speakers; blues and jazz musicians; ordinary Black American speech to the present day
$MESSThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady105 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
72/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1921
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
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Citations & Sources
■
Zora Neale Hurston — "John Redding Goes to Sea" — short story · 1921
Earliest cite of the dismissive sense, per Green's Dictionary of Slang
■
Lil Hardin Armstrong — "It's Murder" — recording · 1936
Earliest cite of the praising sense; Decca session confirmed independently
■
Cab Calloway — The New Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary — glossary · 1944
Glossed as something good
■
+ Cite a sourceDan Burley — Original Handbook of Harlem Jive — book · 1944
Both the quantity and praising senses, pp. 65 and 105
See also