shamble
1 Americannoun
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(used with a singular or plural verb) shambles,
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a slaughterhouse.
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any place of carnage.
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any scene of destruction.
to turn cities into shambles.
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any scene, place, or thing in disorder.
Her desk is a shambles.
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British Dialect. a butcher's shop or stall.
verb (used without object)
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shambles,
present (3rd person singular)
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shambled,
past participle, past
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shambling
present participle
noun
verb
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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shamblesimple
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shamblessimple
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have shambledperfect
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has shambledperfect
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am shamblingprogressive
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are shamblingprogressive
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is shamblingprogressive
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have been shamblingperfect progressive
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has been shamblingperfect progressive
Past
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shambledsimple
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had shambledperfect
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was shamblingprogressive
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were shamblingprogressive
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had been shamblingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of shamble1
before 900; Middle English shamel, Old English sc ( e ) amel stool, table < Late Latin scamellum, Latin scamillum, diminutive of Latin scamnum bench; compare German Schemel
Origin of shamble2
1675–85; perhaps short for shamble-legs one that walks wide (i.e., as if straddling), reminiscent of the legs of a shamble 1 (in earlier sense “butcher's table”)
Explanation
When you shamble down the street, you move slowly and shuffle your feet. People who shamble along are usually tired, elderly, or sad. An exhausted hiker might shamble along the final mile of trail after weeks of walking, and your grandfather might be the speediest one in his nursing home, passing up the residents who shamble along with their walkers. A kindergarten teacher might call to her class, "Don't shamble! Pick up your feet and let's go to the library!" Shamble probably comes from the outdated adjective that means "ungainly or awkward."
Vocabulary lists containing shamble
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
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Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
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Prisoner B-3087
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In my review, I praised the conviction of Gunn’s soupy sci-fi spectacle, writing: “Whatever this sweet, surreal sci-fi shamble is that Gunn has created, everyone here seems to believe ardently in it.”
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 30, 2023
Drawing from Korean folktale and Chung’s expertise as a Slavic literature professor, the narratives here shamble and ooze across a porous divide between highbrow absurdism and lowbrow jump scare.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 9, 2022
There is an enjoyable strain of LA neo-noirs such as Inherent Vice, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Under the Silver Lake where doofus would-be detectives shamble into morally murky conspiracies.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 9, 2020
Even as its various subplots shamble on, the novel keeps reminding us about the rising conflation of reality and fiction.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 3, 2019
Once, Tendai looked behind to see one of the vlei people detach himself from the wall and shamble over to the cart.
From "The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm" by Nancy Farmer
His Bedouin ancestors earned great wealth pearl diving—until foreign farmed pearls tanked the market and left the local economy in shambles.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 19, 2026
"As a still developing country we have limited containment capacity... Our public health sector is in shambles," said a nurse in Nairobi, who asked for anonymity.
From Barron's ● Jun. 5, 2026
Behind the scenes, Gibbard’s personal life was in shambles.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2026
He paid Figg a "substantial" amount of money to double the size of his two-bed property in 2017, but it was instead gutted and left a shambles.
From BBC ● Apr. 24, 2026
It was in shambles, but he’d seen worse this summer on the sightseeing trips his cousins had taken him on.
From "Time Bomb" by Joelle Charbonneau
A dozen dolphins leaped and spun alongside the boat as Capt. Sean Rubino — known to everyone as Bobby Hill for the cartoon character he resembles — shambled down to chum the water.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 26, 2022
Exhausted junior doctors shambled in after shifts with their sleeves pushed up.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 5, 2020
Meanwhile, as Kyoto shambled on, the horizon receded.
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 24, 2015
The afternoon before, as Bouchard worked out in the gym, another man, tall and bearish with a soft voice, shambled over to Leclair — what an incredible coincidence to run into her there!
From New York Times ● Aug. 21, 2014
The shambled outline of an ancient stadium showed beyond the spires of Orleans II, marking the beginning of the old city, the city proper for the drowned lands.
From "Ship Breaker" by Paolo Bacigalupi
They also represent a change in the way that Gimple, the franchise's chief content officer, envisions "The Walking Dead" shambling forward.
From Salon ● Mar. 3, 2024
And I'm shambling through my daily French lessons not because I have to, and not even because I hope they help my brain stay a little bit sharper.
From Salon ● Feb. 10, 2024
The post, from someone claiming to work at Boeing, described the production of Boeing's 737 planes as "a rambling, shambling, disaster waiting to happen".
From BBC ● Jan. 24, 2024
Richie Bravo, the aging Austrian lounge singer shambling his way through Ulrich Seidl’s grimly fascinating new movie, “Rimini,” sure knows his way around a crummy hotel.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 30, 2023
It had breath and claws, and it moved in an odd shambling walk, growling to itself while the spit trailed from its muzzle.
From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
