SHAMBLES

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does shambles mean? 

• SHAMBLES (noun)
  The noun SHAMBLES has 2 senses:

1. a condition of great disorder

2. a building where animals are butchered

  Familiarity information: SHAMBLES used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SHAMBLES (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A condition of great disorder

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("shambles" is a kind of...):

disorder; disorderliness (a condition in which things are not in their expected places)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A building where animals are butchered

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

abattoir; butchery; shambles; slaughterhouse

Hypernyms ("shambles" is a kind of...):

building; edifice (a structure that has a roof and walls and stands more or less permanently in one place)

 Context examples 

The road is all spotted like a shambles at Martinmas.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

My friend had no choice but to hire another contractor to finish the project, for she couldn’t leave her house in shambles.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

When it cleared again the place was a shambles.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

His eyes were blinded so that he could not see, and the blood running from ears and nose and mouth turned the cabin into a shambles.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

A few of the boldest and wisest forsook the fires of the gods, which had now become a shambles, and fled into the forest, where, in the end, they starved to death or were eaten by wolves.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

If the man who had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

One moment Alleyne saw the galley's poop crowded with rushing figures, waving arms, exultant faces; the next it was a blood-smeared shambles, with bodies piled three deep upon each other, the living cowering behind the dead to shelter themselves from that sudden storm-blast of death.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)