shamble

¹ American  

[sham-buhl] / ˈʃæm bəl /

noun

1. (used with a singular or plural verb) shambles,

   1. a slaughterhouse.

   2. any place of carnage.

   3. any scene of destruction.

      to turn cities into shambles.

   4. any scene, place, or thing in disorder.

      Her desk is a shambles.

2. British Dialect. a butcher's shop or stall.

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shamble ² American  

[sham-buhl] / ˈʃæm bəl /

verb (used without object)

• shambles,
  present (3rd person singular)
• shambled,
  past participle,  past
• shambling
  present participle

1. to walk or go awkwardly; shuffle.

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noun

1. a shambling gait.

shamble British  

/ ˈʃæmbəl /

verb

1. (intr) to walk or move along in an awkward or unsteady way

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noun

1. an awkward or unsteady walk

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• shambling
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Participles

• shambling
  present
• shambled
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• shamble
  simple
• shambles
  simple
• have shambled
  perfect
• has shambled
  perfect
• am shambling
  progressive
• are shambling
  progressive
• is shambling
  progressive
• have been shambling
  perfect progressive
• has been shambling
  perfect progressive

Past

• shambled
  simple
• had shambled
  perfect
• was shambling
  progressive
• were shambling
  progressive
• had been shambling
  perfect progressive

Future

• will shamble
  simple
• will have shambled
  perfect
• will be shambling
  progressive
• will have been shambling
  perfect progressive

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."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

shamble shambles shambled shambling

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

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

That's sad in some respects but, in another sense, allows the shows’ creators to bring the series to a worthy end as opposed to forcing it to shamble onward long past relevance.

From Salon ● Mar. 23, 2019

Zombie nouns, unlike the verbs whose bodies they snatched, can shamble around without subjects.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

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

Videos show horrifying, but now predictable, images of entire blocks flattened and basic infrastructure in shambles.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 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

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

He saw Brother Eugene still standing there in the midst of the shambles, tears actually running down his cheeks.

From "The Chocolate War" by Robert Cormier

Figure skating shambled along behind her, bracing for more turmoil.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 15, 2022

The group sometimes shambled into a free-flowing rubato right in the middle of a fast tune, but it maintained conviction, and avoided melodrama.

From New York Times ● Jan. 31, 2018

Meanwhile, as Kyoto shambled on, the horizon receded.

From The New Yorker ● Aug. 24, 2015

As a stripling in his late 70s, he shambled convincingly as the 87-year-old Firs in the Taper's 2006 revival of "The Cherry Orchard."

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 13, 2015

I shambled about the field on scraggy legs, squalled for passes that never came my way.

From "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini

She seemed to be everything that I, a shambling, spit up-stained wreck, was not.

From Salon ● Aug. 19, 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

A shambling, melancholic truth-teller, with a talent for riling up censors, Levant said things that weren’t supposed to be spoken aloud on national TV.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 24, 2023

In the taxonomy of horror, its undead are “fast zombies,” as opposed to the shambling hordes in old-time creature features.

From New York Times ● Jan. 12, 2023

They moved toward him with a shambling gait.

From "The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm" by Nancy Farmer