What's the difference between mess and tousle?

Mess


Definition:

  • (n.) Mass; church service.
  • (n.) A quantity of food set on a table at one time; provision of food for a person or party for one meal; as, a mess of pottage; also, the food given to a beast at one time.
  • (n.) A number of persons who eat together, and for whom food is prepared in common; especially, persons in the military or naval service who eat at the same table; as, the wardroom mess.
  • (n.) A set of four; -- from the old practice of dividing companies into sets of four at dinner.
  • (n.) The milk given by a cow at one milking.
  • (n.) A disagreeable mixture or confusion of things; hence, a situation resulting from blundering or from misunderstanding; as, he made a mess of it.
  • (v. i.) To take meals with a mess; to belong to a mess; to eat (with others); as, I mess with the wardroom officers.
  • (v. t.) To supply with a mess.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) They were preceded by the publication of The Success and Failure of Picasso (1965) and Art and Revolution: Ernst Neizvestny and the Role of the Artist in the USSR (1969); in one, he made a hopeless mess of Picasso’s later career, though he was not alone in this; in the other, he elevated a brave dissident artist beyond his talents.
  • (2) And that's why I was the first G20 finance minister to introduce a permanent tax on banks – because it's fair that they help clear up the mess they did so much to create.
  • (3) We need to stop making excuses for them: But it is up to the state to close the loopholes Yes, the state must work continually to tighten and simplify the tax regime, which is a deliberate mess keeping an entire industry of accounting firms and tax lawyers fed.
  • (4) Of course, amid this mess some free schools are doing marvellously.
  • (5) The first UK comedy show I ever performed was a total mess.
  • (6) The local inanimate environment, including mess hut, sleeping huts and sleeping bags used on expeditions, was searched for contamination by S. aureus but none was detected.
  • (7) Some say Film Socialism is an eccentric masterpiece ; others that it's an eccentric mess.
  • (8) They had a good threat up top with the two lads up front, who messed us around all day long to be honest.
  • (9) Clubs got into a mess partly because rich people, who knew nothing about football, put money in - and they got ripped off."
  • (10) "Sorry to leave it in such a mess, old cock", was the parting shot from the Conservative chancellor.
  • (11) My weight went down and my house was a bit of a mess.
  • (12) Friends describe him, kindly, as a mess: invariably tieless, usually unshaven and "sweaty, because he always goes round on his bike".
  • (13) It had promised its national deficit would drop from 9.5% of GDP to 6%, but turned in an 8.5% deficit that made it the laughing stock of austerity Europe – and left Rajoy's new government having to clean up the mess, which also includes 24% unemployment and a recession that will shrink the economy by 1.7%.
  • (14) But it's not OK to mess up a movie, it's not OK to do that just so you can improve as an actor.
  • (15) And to put us in a situation where we are only ‘patriotic’ and only ‘heard’ if we actively take it upon ourselves to fight ‘terrorism’, as if we are responsible for these horrible acts, or by sending us to wars killing other Muslims, is also a problematic discourse.” While on guard near the Iraqi city of Baqubah in 2004, the 27-year-old Humayun Khan ran towards a suicide bomb vehicle that was headed in the direction of a mess hall where hundreds of servicemen were eating.
  • (16) But they just didn’t know how to manage the situation.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Children and adults in the mess at the detention centre Police would book an appointment to interview a child about a serious allegation then fail to show up, Rose said.
  • (17) Their expertise led to this mess, and would be a hindrance, not a help, in cleaning it up.
  • (18) What a complete mess - a miscued shot, scuffed clearance, and uncontrolled toe-punt as he fell - but a decisive mess all the same."
  • (19) But Hancock said: "Their fiscal policy is in a mess.
  • (20) "The only answer to the mess we are in is social uprising and the end of all these barbaric measures."

Tousle


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To put into disorder; to tumble; to touse.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The inner tension this engendered – coupled with others, not least his as-yet unconfessed homosexuality – can be glimpsed in photographs of the intense, thin-lipped slender young man with piercing blue eyes and tousled hair.
  • (2) Andy McNab, in pink trousers, would tab past the tousled figure of Tom Stoppard, slipping in the back-door in his ankle-length woollen scarf.
  • (3) Since taking office as prime minister for the second time a year ago, stocky, tousle-haired Abe, 59, has avoided hotheaded actions and kept his political powder dry.
  • (4) It is a messianism he combines with the tousled good looks of an ageing matinée idol and an undeniable charisma that at TED in Oxford four years ago had some members of the audience spellbound.
  • (5) A small tousled boy, wearing dungarees, white-skinned, picked it up.
  • (6) It was Taylor's ability to get into the skin of the character, more than the padding and a tousled salt-and-pepper wig, which transformed the legendary beauty into a blowsy virago.
  • (7) Tousle the hair a little, some self-deprecation and a bit of a plug for the BBC TV documentary on Monday to remind the Tory backbenchers that if the ball ever popped out of the scrum, he would be on hand to take it, almost accidentally, over the line.
  • (8) The US is my country now.” On his lap he held that son, a happy child with a tousle of black hair who had been born in a refugee camp 10 months previously.
  • (9) There is food for the families and kids, he said, tousling a young boy’s hair affectionately, but “not much for the rest of us”.
  • (10) It is scrawly coloured pencil drawings, funny questions, tousled hair and the loveliness of a sleeping toddler.
  • (11) From the dogfight inside the ruined hulk of a crash-landed Imperial Star Destroyer to the not-quite-a-surprise appearance in the last moments of the trailer of Han and Chewie, there’s not an uncomfortably racialized alien or a tousle-headed child in sight.
  • (12) At last he is with them once more, leaving those of us who grieve his passing with the memories he gave, the good he did, the dream he kept alive, and a single, enduring image – the image of a man on a boat; white mane tousled; smiling broadly as he sails into the wind, ready for what storms may come, carrying on toward some new and wondrous place just beyond the horizon."
  • (13) At this point his eight-year-old son, a young lad with shockingly blond hair arranged in the tousled fashion which gave him that just-out-of-bed look, emerged from behind his legs.
  • (14) Tonight’s dull 0-0 draw, your foolish MBM hack having recklessly tempted, teased and tousled the hair of fate, kicks off at: 5.30pm.
  • (15) We still read every day about scandalous misuses of public funds.” Silvio Berlusconi’s decline is also helping the tousle-haired comedian, says D’Alimonte.
  • (16) As Andrew O’Hagan put it in the London Review of Books : “The expensive silk tie on the cover tells you everything about the acquisitive vibe behind the whole thing, the appeal for mothers who wouldn’t mind a slightly naughty son-in-law if he also had tousled hair, an Audi R8 Spyder, several apartments and a general handiness with the black Amex … many comforts [are] offered for a life of mild depravity: people in these novels don’t wear underpants they wear Calvin Kleins; they don’t drink wine they have Pinot Grigio; nobody wears sunglasses they wear Ray-Bans … It’s not that having these things is at all unusual, but the specificity implies a desire much larger here than any desire people might have for kinky sex.
  • (17) The work shows Rembrandt in his early 20s, hair tousled, head thrown back, roaring with laughter.
  • (18) She's wearing a loose pale grey T-shirt and her dirty blonde hair is tousled over her shoulders.
  • (19) The children's bedrooms feature retro movie posters and plain mauve bedspreads, and the grinning, tousle-haired kids are pictured playing with bespoke wooden train sets that their fathers have carved out of an oak branch taken from the back garden.
  • (20) After leaving the Foreign Office in search of new adventures, Stewart, who looks (deceptively) winsome and vulnerable with his tousled hair and wiry build, walked 6,000 miles across Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, mostly alone (his winter walk across Afghanistan was the subject of his first book).