comess
English
editEtymology
editFrom Antillean Creole komès, from French commerce[1]. Doublet of commerce.
Noun
editcomess (uncountable)
- (Caribbean) Noise and confusion.
- 2004, Aisha Khan, Callaloo Nation, →ISBN, page 211:
- As Jasmine told me emphatically, "facts" are knowledge -- of correct practices and their meanings -- and provide the antidote to the comess of mixed ways of knowing and of behaving.
- 2012, Connie Wilkins, Steve Berman, Heiresses of Russ 2012, →ISBN, page 260:
- Somewhere in the comess, Beti had lost her headpiece.
- 2014, J.W. Pulis, Religion, Diaspora and Cultural Identity, →ISBN, page 268:
- The seer man revealed that the "comess" (conflict, trouble, confusion) this man was experiencing was linked to cuckoldry (perhaps his own; this part of the story was left vague), explaining that the neighbors "had worked obeah” on him and his family, "put[tin] graveyard dirt and many other things in a buried heap" under the outside stairs.
References
edit- ^ “comess”, in OED Online , Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.