The Only Use of
shambles
in
A Modest Proposal
- As to our City of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose, in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.†
Definitions:
-
(1)
(shambles as in: the place is a shambles) a condition of great disorder
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
In the past, shambles referenced a slaughterhouse (a building used to butcher animals) -- as when Joseph Conrad wrote in The Secret Agent, "I told him that I dreamt of a world like shambles, where the weak would be taken in hand for utter extermination."
Very rarely, shambles is used as a form of the verb shamble to indicate a type of awkward shuffling walk, as in "She shambles when she is nervous."