A mansion in shambles, her adopted daughter in limbo, and a troubled engagement to Tila Tequila.
If they do, he could well resurrect a political career now in shambles.
And as a guarantee of a Third World economy in shambles, Scotland is oil-rich.
The Palestinian economy is in shambles but Fayyad's bar codes will save the day.
The Buffet Rule has failed to pass the Senate, but America's tax code is still in shambles.
One of the most curious rows is the shambles, on a narrow street and dating from the fourteenth century.
I saw the workers in the shambles at the bottom of the Social Pit.
And now—there was smoke and flame above what was doubtless a shambles.
And so standing he defied them and they halted, like sheep at the door of the shambles.
He turned it into a blacksmith shop; you turned it into a shambles.
early 15c., "meat or fish market," from schamil "table, stall for vending" (c.1300), from Old English scamol, scomul "stool, footstool (also figurative); bench, table for vending," an early West Germanic borrowing (cf. Old Saxon skamel "stool," Middle Dutch schamel, Old High German scamel, German schemel, Danish skammel "footstool") from Latin scamillus "low stool, a little bench," ultimately a diminutive of scamnum "stool, bench," from PIE root *skabh- "to prop up, support." In English, sense evolved from "place where meat is sold" to "slaughterhouse" (1540s), then figuratively "place of butchery" (1590s), and generally "confusion, mess" (1901, usually in plural).
"to walk with a shuffling gait, walk awkwardly and unsteadily," 1680s, from an adjective meaning "ungainly, awkward" (c.1600), from shamble (n.) "table, bench" (see shambles), perhaps on the notion of the splayed legs of bench, or the way a worker sits astride it. Cf. French bancal "bow-legged, wobbly" (of furniture), properly "bench-legged," from banc "bench." The noun meaning "a shambling gait" is from 1828. Related: Shambled; shambling.
