different between piece vs message

English

Alternative forms

• peece (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English pece, peece, peice, from Old French piece, from Late Latin petia, pettia, possibly from Gaulish *petty?, from Proto-Celtic *k?esdis (“piece, portion”); doublet of English fit, fytte, fytt (“musical piece, chapter”), Icelandic fit (“web”), German Fitze (“skein”), from Old High German *fitjâ. Compare Welsh peth, Breton pez (“thing”), Irish cuid. Compare French pièce, Portuguese peça, Spanish pieza.

Pronunciation

• enPR: p?s, IPA^(key): /pi?s/
• Rhymes: -i?s
• Homophone: peace

Noun

piece (plural pieces)

1. A part of a larger whole, usually in such a form that it is able to be separated from other parts.
2. A single item belonging to a class of similar items
3. (chess) One of the figures used in playing chess, specifically a higher-value figure as distinguished from a pawn; by extension, a similar counter etc. in other games.
   • 1959, Hans Kmoch, Pawn Power in Chess, I:

     Pawns, unlike pieces, move only in one direction: forward.

4. A coin, especially one valued at less than the principal unit of currency.

   a sixpenny piece

5. An artistic creation, such as a painting, sculpture, musical composition, literary work, etc.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:musical composition

6. An article published in the press.
7. (military) An artillery gun.
   • 1743, Robert Drury, The Pleasant, and Surprizing Adventures of Mr. Robert Drury, during his Fifteen Years Captivity on the Island of Madagascar, London, p. 55,^[1]

     […] all our Ammunition was spent. Those of us who had Money made Slugs of it; their next Shift was to take the middle Screws out of their Guns, and charge their Pieces with them.

8. (US, colloquial) A gun.
9. (US, Canada, colloquial, short for hairpiece) A toupee or wig, especially when worn by a man.

10. (Scotland, Ireland, Britain, US, dialectal) A slice or other quantity of bread, eaten on its own; a sandwich or light snack.
    • 2008, James Kelman, Kieron Smith, Boy, Penguin 2009, page 46:

      My grannie came and gived them all a piece and jam and cups of water then I was to bring them back out to the street and play a game.

11. (US, colloquial, vulgar) A sexual encounter; from piece of ass or piece of tail.

12. (US, colloquial, mildly vulgar, short for piece of crap/piece of shit) A shoddy or worthless object (usually applied to consumer products like vehicles or appliances).

13. (US, slang) A cannabis pipe.
14. (baseball, uncountable) Used to describe a pitch that has been hit but not well, usually either being caught by the opposing team or going foul. Usually used in the past tense with get.

15. (dated, sometimes derogatory) An individual; a person.
    • c. 1579, Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poesy

      If I had not been a piece of a logician before I came to him.

    • 1825, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aid to Reflection

      His own spirit is as unsettled a piece as there is in all the world.

16. (obsolete) A castle; a fortified building.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Spenser to this entry?)

17. (US) A pacifier; a dummy.

    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:pacifier

18. (colloquial) A distance.

19. (rowing) A structured practice row, often used for performance evaluation.

20. An amount of work to be done at one time; a unit of piece work.

Usage notes

When used as a baseball term, the term is figurative in that the baseball is almost never broken into pieces. It is rare in modern baseball for the cover of a baseball to even partially tear loose. In professional baseball, several new, not previously played baseballs are used in each game.

It could be argued that the phrase was never meant (not even metaphorically) to refer to breaking the ball into pieces, and that "get a piece of the ball" means the bat contacts only a small area of the ball - in other words, that the ball is hit off-center. In that case "get" would mean "succeed in hitting", not "obtain".

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:piece

Derived terms

Descendants

• Sranan Tongo: pisi
• ? Finnish: biisi
• ? Japanese: ??? (p?su)

Translations

See also

• chunk
• bit
• peace

Verb

piece (third-person singular simple present pieces, present participle piecing, simple past and past participle pieced)

1. (transitive, usually with together) To assemble (something real or figurative).

   • His adversaries […] pieced themselves together in a joint opposition against him.

2. To make, enlarge, or repair, by the addition of a piece or pieces; to patch; often with out.
3. (slang) To produce a work of graffiti more complex than a tag.

Derived terms

Middle French

Etymology

From Old French piece, from Vulgar Latin *pettia, from Gaulish *petty?, from Proto-Celtic *k?esdis (“piece, portion”).

Noun

piece f (plural pieces)

1. piece, bit, part
2. moment (duration of time)

Descendants

• French: pièce
  • ? Danish: pjece
  • ? Northern Kurdish: piyes
  • ? Norwegian:

    Norwegian Bokmål: piece

  • ? Romanian: pies?
  • ? Russian: ?????? (p?jésa)
    • ? Kazakh: ????? (p?esa)
  • ? Swedish: pjäs
  • ? Yiddish: ??????? (pyese)
• Norman: pièche (Jersey)

References

• piece on Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330–1500) (in French)

Old French

Alternative forms

• pece

Etymology

From Late Latin pettia, from Gaulish *petty?, from Proto-Celtic *k?esdis (“piece, portion”).

Noun

piece f (oblique plural pieces, nominative singular piece, nominative plural pieces)

1. piece, bit, part
   • circa 1170, Chrétien de Troyes, Érec et Énide:

     Que del hiaume une piece tranche.

     It cuts a piece off his helmet

Descendants

• Middle French: piece
  • French: pièce
    • ? Danish: pjece
    • ? Northern Kurdish: piyes
    • ? Norwegian:

      Norwegian Bokmål: piece

    • ? Romanian: pies?
    • ? Russian: ?????? (p?jésa)
      • ? Kazakh: ????? (p?esa)
    • ? Swedish: pjäs
    • ? Yiddish: ??????? (pyese)
  • Norman: pièche (Jersey)
• Walloon: pîce
• ? Middle English: pece, pese, pesse, peace, pease, peise, pice, pise, piece, piese, pecche
  • English: piece
    • Sranan Tongo: pisi
    • ? Finnish: biisi
    • ? Japanese: ??? (p?su)
  • Yola: peece
  • ? Middle Irish: pissa
    • Irish: píosa
  • ? Scottish Gaelic: pìos

Polish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?p??.t?s?/

Noun

piece m inan

1. inflection of piec:
   1. nominative plural
   2. accusative plural
   3. vocative plural

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Old French message, from Late Latin missaticum, from Latin mittere, missum (“to send”). Displaced native Old English ærende which is survived in English errand.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?m?s?d??/
• Hyphenation: mes?sage

Noun

message (plural messages)

1. A communication, or what is communicated; any concept or information conveyed.

   • I have a message from God unto thee.

2. An underlying theme or conclusion to be drawn from something.

3. (Britain, Ireland, chiefly in the plural) An errand.
4. (Ireland, Scotland, Northern England) See messages (“groceries, shopping”).

Abbreviations

• msg

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Descendants

• Tok Pisin: mesej
• ? Gulf Arabic: ???? (m?sij, “short electronic message”)
• ? German: Message
• ? Japanese: ????? (mess?ji)
• ? Korean: ??? (mesiji)
• ? Malay: mesej
• ? Russian: ???????? (m??ss?dž)

Translations

References

• message on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Verb

message (third-person singular simple present messages, present participle messaging, simple past and past participle messaged)

1. To send a message to; to transmit a message to, e.g. as text via a cell phone.

   Just message me for directions.

   I messaged her about the concert.

2. To send (something) as a message; usually refers to electronic messaging.

   She messaged me the information yesterday.

   Please message the final report by fax.

3. (intransitive) To send a message or messages; to be capable of sending messages.

   We've implemented a new messaging service.

   The runaway computer program was messaging non-stop.

4. (obsolete) To bear as a message.

Synonyms

• (send a text message to): text

See also

• instant message
• instant messaging
• messenger
• mission

Anagrams

• megasse

French

Etymology

From Old French message, from Late Latin missaticum, from Latin mitto, mittere (“to send”), missum.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /me.sa?/, /m?.sa?/

Noun

message m (plural messages)

1. message
   • 1928, André Breton, Nadja

     Un journal du matin suffira toujours à me donner de mes nouvelles : X . . . ., 26 décembre. - L'opérateur chargé de la station de télégraphie sans fil située à l' Île du Sable, a capté un fragment de message qui aurait été lancé dimanche soir à telle heure par le . . . . Le message disait notamment : « Il y a quelque chose qui ne va pas » mais il n'indiquait pas la position de l'avion à ce moment, et, par suite de très mauvaises conditions atmosphériques et des interférences qui se produisaient, l'opérateur n'a pu comprendre aucune autre phrase, ni entrer de nouveau en communication. Le message était transmis sur une longueur d'onde de 625 mètres ; d'autre part, étant donné la force de réception, l'opérateur a cru pouvoir localiser l'avion dans un rayon de 80 kilomètres autour de l' Île du Sable.

     A morning paper will always be adequate to give me my news : X . . ., December 26 -- The radio operator on the Ile du Sable has received a fragment of a message sent Sunday evening at such and such an hour by the . . . . The message said, in particular : "There is something which is not working" but failed to indicate the position of the plane at this moment, and due to extremely bad atmospheric conditions and static, the operator was unable to understand any further sentence, nor to make communication again. The message was transmitted on a wave length of 625 meters ; moreover given the strength of the reception, the operator states he can localize the plane within a radius of 50 miles around the Ile du Sable.

Derived terms

• messager
• messagerie

Descendants

• Haitian Creole: mesaj
• ? Albanian: mesazh
• ? Azerbaijani: mesaj
• ? Moroccan Arabic: ?????? (mesaž)
• ? Romanian: mesaj
• ? Turkish: mesaj

Related terms

• mettre

Further reading

• “message” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Interlingua

Etymology

Old French message, see above.

Noun

message (plural messages)

1. message

Derived terms

• messagero
• messageria

Norman

Noun

message m (plural messages)

1. Alternative form of m'sage

Old French

Alternative forms

• mesage, messaige

Etymology

From Late Latin missaticum, from Classical Latin missum, the supine of mitt?

Noun

message m (oblique plural messages, nominative singular messages, nominative plural message)

1. message (form of communication)
2. messenger

Derived terms

• messagier

Related terms

• metre

Descendants

• Middle French: message
  • French: message
    • Haitian Creole: mesaj
    • ? Albanian: mesazh
    • ? Azerbaijani: mesaj
    • ? Moroccan Arabic: ?????? (mesaž)
    • ? Romanian: mesaj
    • ? Turkish: mesaj
  • Norman: m'sage, message
• ? English: message
  • Tok Pisin: mesej
  • ? Gulf Arabic: ???? (m?sij, “short electronic message”)
  • ? German: Message
  • ? Japanese: ????? (mess?ji)
  • ? Korean: ??? (mesiji)
  • ? Malay: mesej
  • ? Russian: ???????? (m??ss?dž)
• ? Galician: mensaxe
• ? Italian: messaggio
• ? Portuguese: mensagem
• ? Scots: message
• ? Spanish: mensaje

Scots

Etymology

Old French message, see above.

Noun

message (plural messages)

1. message
2. (in plural) purchases, shopping

   go the messages - do one's shopping