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Show Take My Word for It! By Frank Colby WHAT IS THE ORIGIN? Q. It always disturbs me to hear army and navy food spoken of as "mess." Why do they use so unappetizing un-appetizing a name because it is truly descriptive? Mrs. H. M. S. A. It has been several years since I gave the history of this curious word, which really isn't as bad as it sounds. The word mess, "food in general; a meal; a dish of food," is simply an English spelling of the French word mets, pronounced: meh. It means "That which is placed on the table; the different dishes served at a meal." In Old French, mets was spelled "mes," and in this form it entered Middle English and then grew another an-other "s," becoming "mess," meaning mean-ing "a dish of food." We often hear it said that Esau sold his birthright for a "mess of pottage." But the phrase does not occur anywhere in the Authorized Version. The wording of Genesis 25:34 is: "Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he (Esau) did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright." However, "A Mess of Pottage" did occur as a chapter heading in Thomas Matthew's English Bible of 1537 and in the Geneva Bible of 1560, "... but was not taken into the Authorized Version of 1611." Mencken's "A New Dictionary of Quotations." The word mess in the meaning of "a sufficient quantity of a given food for a dish or meal" is quite common in the South where many Elizabethan words and phrases have survived. Bell Syndicate. WNU Features. |