shambles

• POS: Noun
• HYPHEN: sham=bles

OXFORD DICTIONARY

shambles, n.pl. (usu. treated as sing.)
1 colloq. a mess or muddle (the room was a shambles).
2 a butcher's slaughterhouse.
3 a scene of carnage.

Etymology

pl. of shamble stool, stall f. OE sc(e)amul f. WG f. L scamellum dimin. of scamnum bench

THESAURUS

shambles

Augean stables, Belsen, DMZ, abattoir, aceldama, battle line, battle site, battlefield, battleground, bloodbath, blue ruin, botch, botchery, breakup, butchering, butchery, carnage, chaos, combat area, combat zone, concentration camp, consumption, damnation, decimation, depredation, desolation, despoilment, despoliation, destruction, devastation, disaster, disintegration, disorganization, disruption, dissolution, enemy line, field, field of battle, field of blood, firing line, front line, gas chamber, hash, havoc, hecatomb, holocaust, killing ground, landing beach, line, line of battle, mess, mix-up, muddle, mull, muss, occision, perdition, pigpen, pigsty, ravage, ruin, ruination, seat of war, slaughter, slaughterhouse, slaughtering, spoliation, stockyard, the front, theater, theater of operations, theater of war, undoing, vandalism, waste, wrack, wrack and ruin, wreck, zone of communications

ROGET THESAURUS

shambles

Killing

N killing, homicide, manslaughter, murder, assassination, trucidation, iccusion, effusion of blood, blood, blood shed, gore, slaughter, carnage, butchery, battue, massacre, fusillade, noyade, thuggery, Thuggism, deathblow, finishing stroke, coup de grace, quietus, execution, judicial murder, martyrdom, butcher, slayer, murderer, Cain, assassin, terrorist, cutthroat, garroter, bravo, Thug, Moloch, matador, sabreur, guet-a-pens, gallows, executioner, man-eater, apache, hatchet man, highbinder, regicide, parricide, matricide, fratricide, infanticide, feticide, foeticide, uxoricide, vaticide, suicide, felo de se, hara-kiri, suttee, Juggernath, immolation, auto da fe, holocaust, suffocation, strangulation, garrote, hanging, lapidation, deadly weapon, Aceldama, slaughtering, phthisozoics, sport, sporting, the chase, venery, hunting, coursing, shooting, fishing, pig- sticking, sportsman, huntsman, fisherman, hunter, Nimrod, slaughterhouse, meat packing plant, shambles, abattoir, fatal accident, violent death, casualty, killing, murderous, slaughterous, sanguinary, sanguinolent, blood stained, blood thirsty, homicidal, red handed, bloody, bloody minded, ensanguined, gory, thuggish, mortal, fatal, lethal, dead, deadly, mortiferous, lethiferous, unhealthy internecine, suicidal, sporting, piscatorial, piscatory, in at the death, assassination has never changed the history of the.