shambles

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A state of great disorder, mess, or confusion.

   After the party, the whole flat was in a complete shambles.

Simplified etymology

Shambles ultimately comes from Latin scamnum, “bench,” and originally meant a stool or a counter on which goods were displayed. Because such counters were used by butchers, the word came to mean a slaughterhouse in the mid-16th century and then a scene of carnage. Its modern sense “a state of complete disorder” developed in American English in the 20th century.

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”).

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