shambles

noun

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

verb (used without object), sham·bled, sham·bling.

1. to walk or go awkwardly; shuffle.

noun

2. a shambling gait.

noun (functioning as singular or plural)

1. a place of great disorderthe room was a shambles after the party
2. a place where animals are brought to be slaughtered
3. any place of slaughter or carnage
4. British dialect a row of covered stalls or shops where goods, originally meat, are sold

verb

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

noun

2. an awkward or unsteady walk

n.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). v.“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.