'thorough mess' is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It is usually used to describe something that is in a state of disarray. For example: "My room was a thorough mess after I'd finished unpacking all my boxes."
This week I spent time in two worlds, separated by more than half a century and thousands of miles, in which the tremors of cataclysmic change were causing folks to make thorough messes of their lives.
Make a thorough job of clearing up the mess.
Unfortunately, the magazine had messed up its usually thorough testing procedure, with cars being crashed at much higher speeds than advertised.
KUDOS to the Congressional Oversight Panel for publishing a thoughtful and thorough report last week on the mortgage documentation mess.
In Artas, reporters were shown a basement room with a terrible mess, apparently a result of a thorough search.
In his press conference, Mr Bush promised a thorough review of sanctions.But criticising the current mess is easy.
So began 40 Days of Dating, a blog documenting each day of the experiment in thorough and visually delightful detail: videos, questionnaires, photographs and text all helped transform the mess of a relationship into beautiful order.
Clean labelling looks less like a thorough spring clean of factory food than a superficial tidy-up, with the most embarrassing mess stuffed in the cupboard behind a firmly shut door – where, hopefully, no one will notice.
Worse still, Washington's "solution" is to repeat the mistakes that helped get us into this mess to begin with: borrowing and spending beyond our means -- and trying to delay a thorough economic cleansing that is long overdue.
