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Mess vs Null - What's the difference?

mess | null |

As nouns the difference between mess and null

is that mess is (obsolete) mass; church service or mess can be a disagreeable mixture or confusion of things; hence, a situation resulting from blundering or from misunderstanding; a disorder while null is zero, nil; the cardinal number before einn.

As a verb mess

is (label) to take meals with a mess or mess can be (label) to make a mess of.

mess

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl) (m), partly from (etyl) . More at (m); see also (m).

Noun

(es)
  • (obsolete) Mass; church service.
  • A quantity of food set on a table at one time; provision of food for a person or party for one meal; also, the food given to an animal at one time.
  • A mess of pottage.
  • * Milton
  • At their savoury dinner set / Of herbs and other country messes .
  • 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.
  • the wardroom mess
  • * 1610 , , IV. iv. 11:
  • But that our feasts / In every mess have folly, and the feeders / Digest it with accustom,
  • A set of four (from the old practice of dividing companies into sets of four at dinner).
  • (Latimer)
  • (US) The milk given by a cow at one milking.
  • Derived terms
    * Eton mess * lose the number of one's mess * mess hall * mess up * Mills Mess

    Verb

  • (label) To take meals with a mess.
  • (label) To belong to a mess.
  • (label) To eat (with others).
  • (label) To supply with a mess.
  • Etymology 2

    Perhaps a corruption of (etyl) , compare (muss), or derived from Etymology 1 "mixed foods, as for animals".

    Noun

    (-)
  • A disagreeable mixture or confusion of things; hence, a situation resulting from blundering or from misunderstanding; a disorder.
  • (label) A large quantity or number.
  • (label) Excrement.
  • Synonyms
    * see also

    Verb

    (es)
  • (label) To make a mess of.
  • (label) To throw into confusion.
  • (label) To interfere.
  • Derived terms
    (terms derived from "mess") * messy * mess around * mess up * mess with

    References

    *

    Anagrams

    * ----

    null

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A non-existent or empty value or set of values.
  • Zero]] quantity of [[expression, expressions; nothing.
  • (Francis Bacon)
  • Something that has no force or meaning.
  • (computing) the ASCII or Unicode character (), represented by a zero value, that indicates no character and is sometimes used as a string terminator.
  • (computing) the attribute of an entity that has no valid value.
  • Since no date of birth was entered for the patient, his age is null .
  • One of the beads in nulled work.
  • (statistics) null hypothesis
  • Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Having no validity, "null and void"
  • insignificant
  • * 1924 , Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove :
  • In proportion as we descend the social scale our snobbishness fastens on to mere nothings which are perhaps no more null than the distinctions observed by the aristocracy, but, being more obscure, more peculiar to the individual, take us more by surprise.
  • absent or non-existent
  • (mathematics) of the null set
  • (mathematics) of or comprising a value of precisely zero
  • (genetics, of a mutation) causing a complete loss of gene function, amorphic.
  • Derived terms

    * nullity

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • to nullify; to annul
  • (Milton)

    See also

    * nil ----