Word.ws English Dictionary

muss

/mʌs/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Northern England/mʊs/

muss verb: to rumple, tousle or make (something) untidy.

Verb

muss (third-person singular simple present musses, present participle mussing, simple past and past participle mussed)

  1. (transitive) To rumple, tousle or make (something) untidy.
    • The old man affectionately mussed his grandson's hair.

Noun (1)

muss (plural musses)

  1. A mess (disagreeable mixture or confusion of things; disorder).
  2. (obsolete) A scramble, as when small objects are thrown down, to be taken by those who can seize them; a confused struggle.
    • Authority melts from me: of late, when I cried 'Ho!' like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth, and cry 'Your will?' Have you no ears? I am Antony yet.c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
    • Gods so! a muss, a muss, a muss, a muss.1614 November 10 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), Beniamin Iohnson [i.e., Ben Jonson], Bartholmew Fayre: A Comedie, […], London: […] I[ohn] B[eale] for Robert Allot, […], published 1631...

Noun (2)

muss (plural musses)

  1. (obsolete) A term of endearment.

muss meaning in Bengali and Malayalam

muss in Bengali

এলোমেলো করা, বিশৃঙ্খল করা, বিশৃঙ্খলা

muss in Malayalam

dishevel, ruffle, tousle
അലങ്കോലമാക്കുക, കുഴക്കുക, ചുളിവീഴ്ത്തുക, കലക്കമുണ്ടാക്കുക, താറുമാറാക്കുക, ഉലച്ചിടുക

Examples of muss in a sentence

  • Even his mussed cravat and cow licked hair had a "just folks" quality.
  • “With the clean uniforms from your wall locker you didnt want to get mussed up.
  • There's a Costco-sized vat of hair clay to keep his hair mussed just so, no matter the constant rain.

All 11 example sentences with muss

Forms of muss

Verb
third-person singular presentmusses
present participlemussing
past participlemussed
pastmussed
Noun
pluralmusses

Past tense of muss: mussed

Origin of muss

Related to mess (“disorder”).

Compare Middle English mus (“a mouse”). See mouse.

Words formed from muss

Phrases with muss

Words that rhyme with muss

11 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about muss

What does muss mean?
Muss means to rumple, tousle or make (something) untidy.
What is muss in Bengali?
Muss in Bengali is এলোমেলো করা, বিশৃঙ্খল করা, বিশৃঙ্খলা. See Muss meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is muss?
Muss can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce muss?
Muss is pronounced /mʌs/.
What is the past tense of muss?
The past tense of muss is mussed.

Words near muss in the dictionary

  1. Musquizes
  2. musrol
  3. musrole
  4. musroles
  5. musrols
  6. muss
  7. muss up
  8. muss-be
  9. Mussa
  10. mussable
  11. Mussaf

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: muss (page history and authors); muss (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); muss (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-muss.wav.

Cite this entry: “muss.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/muss. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.