muss
Other forms: mussed; mussing; musses
To muss is to mess up. When your grandmother reaches over to muss your hair, she tousles it — you'll have to carefully comb it again before you leave for school.
Falling in the mud might make you muss your new jeans, and a strong wind on a boat will muss everyone's hair. While the verb muss means "make untidy," it's almost always used to talk about hair, and occasionally clothing. The word muss has been around since the nineteenth century, and it was probably originally a variation on mess. A muss was once also a term meaning "a fight or disturbance."
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make messy or untidy“the child mussed up my hair”
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synonyms:
tussle
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type of:
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disarrange
destroy the arrangement or order of
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disarrange
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a state of confusion and disorderliness
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type of:
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disorder, disorderliness
a condition in which things are not in their expected places
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disorder, disorderliness
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Vocabulary lists containing muss
"Stop! Thief!" are the words often shouted at him, so a young orphan takes that as his name as he struggles to survive in Warsaw during World War II.
After Maribel Rivera sustains a debilitating injury, her family leaves a comfortable life in Mexico to seek treatment in the United States. Maribel develops a close relationship with her new neighbor Mayor, setting in motion a devastating chain of events.
In the first book of the Hazelwood High trilogy, basketball player Andy Jackson deals with the aftermath of the car accident that killed his best friend.