shambles
Britishnoun
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a place of great disorder
the room was a shambles after the party
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a place where animals are brought to be slaughtered
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any place of slaughter or carnage
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dialect a row of covered stalls or shops where goods, originally meat, are sold
Etymology
Origin of shambles
C14 shamble table used by meat vendors, from Old English sceamel stool, from Late Latin scamellum a small bench, from Latin scamnum stool
Explanation
Originally a word for a slaughterhouse, shambles now usually means "one heck of a mess," as in "You were supposed to clean your room, but it's still a shambles!" When the job market is in a shambles, people have trouble finding work. When a supermarket is in a shambles, there might be melons and milk spilled all over the floor. If everyone in a classroom is talking and yelling at once, the class is a shambles because no one can hear each other or get any work done. People say things are "in shambles" or "a shambles" — they mean the same thing. However you say it, a shambles is chaotic, disorderly, out of hand, and off the hook — a major, five-alarm mess.
Vocabulary lists containing shambles
"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, Chapters 7–11
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"A Modest Proposal," Vocabulary from the satire
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The Odyssey
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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.
He said that his life was in shambles.
From Slate • Apr. 19, 2026
It never made any connection with the Spurs players, while a welter of tactical shifts hinted that he was struggling to work out how to get the best out of the shambles he had inherited.
From BBC • Mar. 29, 2026
Experts say these policy shifts have broken a student loan system that was already in shambles, leaving nearly 45 million borrowers, disproportionately women, in financial and emotional distress.
From Salon • Mar. 17, 2026
Cuba's ageing electricity generation system is in shambles, with daily power outages of up to 20 hours the norm in parts of the island, which lacks the fuel needed to generate power.
From Barron's • Mar. 16, 2026
Then the mad dash home, with tears biting my cheeks, my skin crawling, my stomach in shambles, heading straight for Mom.
From "I'll Give You the Sun" by Jandy Nelson
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.
