messages

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of message.

   He scrolled through dozens of messages after returning from vacation.

   The radio station read out birthday messages from listeners all morning.

   Note

   An ordinary -s plural that covers every sense of the noun, from a single notification on a phone to the underlying point of a speech or story. The same spelling does other work too. In Ireland and the UK the plural can mean errands, which shades into the shopping-and-groceries meaning, and it is also the verb form in sentences like she messages her friends.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of message.

   Whenever the schedule shifts, the coach messages the whole team at once.

   She messages her landlord every time the heating breaks down.

   Note

   The verb behind it is now mostly electronic, and it takes the person directly, with no "to" (she messages her landlord). It can also take the thing sent as its object, or stand alone for a device that messages. An older, now obsolete use meant simply to carry something as a message. Next to the noun plural, only the sentence tells them apart: a subject before it marks the verb.

3. 3
   noundialectalIrelandNorthern EnglandScotlandcountableplural

   Shopping, groceries, or errands; the items bought on a trip to the store.

   She went into town to get the messages for the week.

   He carried the messages home in two heavy bags.

   Similargroceries, shopping, provisions

   Note

   Everyday speech in Ireland, Scotland and Northern England uses this plural for the household shopping, meaning both the errand and the bags it fills. It lives only in the plural: you go for the messages, never for a message. Raymond McClean goes "up the town to buy some messages" in The Road to Bloody Sunday (1983), and in Alan Warner's Morvern Callar (1995) a customer guards "her messages," meaning the goods themselves.

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