A shambles is a scene of complete disorder. An absolute shambles, the whole thing was a shambles, make a shambles of it.
It takes a singular verb despite the s: the meeting was a shambles. The word once meant a slaughterhouse, and before that a butcher's bench, which is why the Shambles is a street name in several English cities where the butchers stood.
1nounshamblesA scene of complete disorder.
“After the party, the house was a complete shambles.”
shambles is a disorder.
Old English sceamol meant a bench or stool, then a butcher's stall, then a slaughterhouse.
Latin
scamillum — little bench, ridge
Vulgar Latin
scamellum
Proto-West Germanic
*skamul
Old English
sċeamol
Middle English
schamels
English, today
shambles
Built from
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”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA