mess hall
(US) A military dining room or building on an army or marine base.
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Captain Picard called sick bay. "The replicator's broken and I'm starving!" I took the helm. "Warp 9, engage—to the mess hall!" We crash-landed through the galley doors. A tiny shrimp sat at the stove, flipping fried…
[Fallout 3 & Fallout New Vegas] Clean up certain areas, within Rivet City and McCarran's mess hall for example. These are settlements.
Definitions
(US) A military dining room or building on an army or marine base.
In the mess hall, lunch was served in plastic bowls and paper cups: rice with ragù, sausage soup with day-old bread.
“Captain Picard called sick bay. "The replicator's broken and I'm starving!" I took the helm. "Warp 9, engage—to the mess hall!" We crash-landed through the galley doors. A tiny shrimp sat at the stove, flipping fried rice. Are you telling me a shrimp fried this rice?”
— Bluesky· May 2026“[Fallout 3 & Fallout New Vegas] Clean up certain areas, within Rivet City and McCarran's mess hall for example. These are settlements.”
— Bluesky· May 2026
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Semantically related
- dining facility85%
(US, military) A mess hall.
- chow hall83%
(military slang) mess hall.
- chow hall78%
Military slang for the mess hall — the cafeteria where service members eat their meals on base. Chow hall carries the no-frills, institutional energy of military life: you grab a tray, get your food, eat fast, and get back to it. Outside the armed forces, the phrase has bled into school, prison, and camp contexts to describe any large communal eating space where the menu isn't exactly gourmet.
- dining facility73%
Dining facility is the official US military term for what civilians call a cafeteria and older soldiers called a mess hall. The more sanitary, clinical label was introduced partly to make military food service sound less grim — with varying success. Soldiers often use the abbreviation DFAC (pronounced 'dee-fack') in everyday speech, and the full phrase dining facility shows up in official orders, base signage, and any documentation where 'mess hall' would feel too informal.
- dinette68%
(US, military, informal) A submarine's mess hall.