muss
muss Lexical Profile
muss Game Scores & Validity
• verb
North American To make untidy, rumpled, or disheveled (especially of hair or clothing).
"The grandfather affectionately reached over to muss the little boy's neatly combed hair."
• noun
North American A state of untidiness, disorder, or confusion, today encountered chiefly in the idiomatic phrase 'no fuss, no muss.'
"The new appliance prepares dinner in twenty minutes with no fuss and no muss."
An archaic term for a confused scramble, disturbance, or row, originally referring to a game in which small objects are thrown down to be gathered up by bystanders.
"In the old play, the nobleman tosses a handful of coins into the street to cause a muss among the crowd."
Word Nuance & Usage
Primarily used in North American English; as a noun, it survives most commonly in the fixed rhyming expression 'no fuss, no muss,' meaning without trouble or complication.
• Rhymes for muss
Word Origin & Etymology
Originating in 19th-century American English, 'muss' is a dialectal variant of 'mess,' while its archaic sense of a confused scramble derives from Middle French 'mouche,' the name of an old children's game.