Word.ws English Dictionary

shambles

/ˈʃæmbəlz/

shambles noun: a scene of great disorder or ruin. Also the third-person singular simple present indicative of shamble.

Noun

shambles (countable and uncountable, plural shambles)

  1. A scene of great disorder or ruin.
    • Considering my life's in shambles right now, couldn't you at least take the blame?1989 March 15, Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
  2. (countable) A great mess or clutter.
    • This bedroom is a shambles.
  3. (countable) A scene of bloodshed, carnage or devastation.
  4. (countable) A slaughterhouse.
  5. (archaic, countable) A butcher's shop.
    • Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 1 Corinthians 10:25
    • As to our City of Dublin, Shambles may be appointed for this purpoſe, in the moſt convenient parts of it, and Butchers vve may be aſſured vvill not be vvanting, […]1729, [Jonathan Swift], A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents, or the Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick, Dublin: […]...

Also used as

shambles is also the third-person singular simple present indicative of shamble.

shambles meaning in Urdu, Nepali and Thai

shambles in Urdu

شیمبلز, شیمبل

shambles in Nepali

शम्बल्स

shambles in Thai

great mess or clutter
เละเทะ lé-té, เละตุ้มเป๊ะ lé-dtûm-bpé

Forms of shambles

pluralshambles

Plural of shambles: shambles

Origin of shambles

From Middle English schamels, plural of schamel, from Old English sċeamol, sċamul (“bench, stool”), from Proto-West Germanic *skamul, *skamil (“stool, bench”), from Vulgar Latin scamellum, from Latin scamillum (“little bench, ridge”), from Latin scamnum (“bench, ridge, breadth of a field”).

Words formed from shambles

Questions about shambles

What does shambles mean?
Shambles means a scene of great disorder or ruin.
What is shambles in Urdu?
Shambles in Urdu is شیمبلز, شیمبل. See Shambles meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is shambles?
Shambles is a noun.
How do you pronounce shambles?
Shambles is pronounced /ˈʃæmbəlz/.
What is the plural of shambles?
The plural of shambles is shambles.

Words near shambles in the dictionary

  1. Shambhavi
  2. shamble
  3. shambled
  4. shambler
  5. shamblers
  6. shambles
  7. Shamblin
  8. shambling
  9. shamblingly
  10. shamblings
  11. Shamblins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shambles (page history and authors); shambles (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); shambles (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-shambles.ogg.

Cite this entry: “shambles.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shambles. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.