Crossword clues for shamble
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Shamble \Sham"ble\, n. [OE. schamel a bench, stool, AS. scamel, sceamol, a bench, form, stool, fr. L. scamellum, dim. of scamnum a bench, stool.]
(Mining) One of a succession of niches or platforms, one above another, to hold ore which is thrown successively from platform to platform, and thus raised to a higher level.
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pl. A place where butcher's meat is sold.
As summer flies are in the shambles.
--Shak. -
pl. A place for slaughtering animals for meat.
To make a shambles of the parliament house.
--Shak.
Shamble \Sham"ble\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Shambled; p. pr. & vb. n. Shambling.] [Cf. OD. schampelen to slip, schampen to slip away, escape. Cf. Scamble, Scamper.] To walk awkwardly and unsteadily, as if the knees were weak; to shuffle along.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"to walk with a shuffling gait, walk awkwardly and unsteadily," 1680s, from an adjective meaning "ungainly, awkward" (c.1600), from shamble (n.) "table, bench" (see shambles), perhaps on the notion of the splayed legs of bench, or the way a worker sits astride it. Compare French bancal "bow-legged, wobbly" (of furniture), properly "bench-legged," from banc "bench." The noun meaning "a shambling gait" is from 1828. Related: Shambled; shambling.
Wiktionary
n. (context mining English) One of a succession of niches or platforms, one above another, to hold ore which is thrown successively from platform to platform, and thus raised to a higher level. vb. To walk while shuffling or dragging the feet.
WordNet
Usage examples of "shamble".
With appalling suddenness the charge had turned into a shambles where armored figures died amid screaming mangled horses.
The phagors shambled back and forth, sticking their milts up their slotted nostrils, and occasionally exchanging a grunted word with each other.
Rome enough to attempt to invade our Asia Province, misgoverned shambles though it might be.
Five mobsters, all of them gorillas of Morello lay in a bloody shambles on the floor.
Breath hissed between his clenched teeth, the Mad Prophet mustered his assemblage of joints and plaintively shambled erect.
Around them was a shambles of wires and broken instrument racks, impaled by the branch of a pandanus tree that had come straight through the roof.
The five canoas, and one of the periaguas, got under her stern, and so plied her with shot that her decks were like shambles, running with blood and brains, five minutes after she came to the wind.
At once, a dozen plantlike creatures shambled into the greenhouse, and she cleared her mind so as not to attract their attention.
The Splin-terscat led, his brownish quilled body shambling through brush and into grasses, under brambles and over logs as if they were all one, a single obstacle that required the same amount of effort to surmount.
The Splinterscat led, his brownish quilled body shambling through brush and into grasses, under brambles and over logs as if they were all one, a single obstacle that required the same amount of effort to surmount.
It took her a few minutes to quiet and reassure him, but at last she managed to coax him into a slow shamble in the direction of the radiology department.
It took Milo over two weeks to sort out the shambles of that last attack, to replace the sappers and cooks, sanitarians and smiths, artificiers and wagoners killed or wounded or missing.
It took Milo over two weeks to sort out the shambles of that last attack, to replace the sappers and cooks, sanitarians and smiths, artificers and wagoners killed or wounded or missing.
Filthy, dejected Forthwegian captives shambled off into the west, a handful of Unkerlanters guarding them.
The fellow shambled up just then, still looking very much like an unmade bed.