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Shambles   /ʃˈæmbəlz/   Listen
Shambles

noun
1.
A condition of great disorder.
2.
A building where animals are butchered.  Synonyms: abattoir, butchery, slaughterhouse.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Shambles" Quotes from Famous Books



... room was small but was the best that could be obtained. Within the space of ten minutes it became a perfect shambles. The wounded were brought in without pause and under the candlelight Nikitin, two sanitars, and I worked until the sweat ran down our backs and arms in streams. It dripped from my nose, into my mouth, into my eyes. The wounds were horrible. No man ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... red with passion. "If Norfolk thinks to act the King, and turn the city into a shambles,"—with a mighty oath—"he shall abye it. Here, Lord Cardinal—more, let the free pardon be drawn up for the two lads. And we will ourselves write to the Lord Mayor and to Norfolk that though they may work their will on the movers ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... toughened skin, as in crocodiles and alligators, arranged in two overlapping rows of imbricated shields, exactly like the round tiles so common on the roofs of Italian cottages. The fish walks, or rather shambles along ungracefully, by the shuffling movement of a pair of stiff spines placed close behind his head, aided by the steering action of his tail, and a constant snake-like wriggling motion of his entire body. Leg spines of somewhat the same sort are found in the common English ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... "It looks like a shambles!" Fred answered, glancing to right and left and indicating the victims of the whip writhing in ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... you desire to boil, or Pork for the same, dressing it fresh from the Shambles, or Market, and salt it very well, just before you put it into the Pot; then as soon as your Meat is salted, take a coarse Linnen Cloth, and flour it very well, and then put the Meat into it, and tye it up close. Put this ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... vengeance that comes after lingering years! Ye quenched the voice of my singer?—hark, in your dying ears, The song of the conflagration! Ye left me a widow alone? —Behold, the whole of your race consumes, sinew and bone And torturing flesh together: man, mother, and maid Heaped in a common shambles; and already, borne by the trade, The smoke of your dissolution darkens the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... rather farther into Moor-street, none into Park-street, take in Digbeth, Deritend, Edgbaston-street, as being the road to Dudley, Bromsgrove, and the whole West of England; Spiceal-street, the Shambles, a larger part of Bell street, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... on her bag, deeply attentive, and now rises and takes it up. Jo, repeating, "Ony you tell the young lady as I never went fur to hurt her and wot the genlmn ses!" nods and shambles and shivers, and smears and blinks, and half laughs and half cries, a farewell to her, and takes his creeping way along after Allan Woodcourt, close to the houses on the opposite side of the street. In this order, the two come up out of Tom-all-Alone's into the broad rays of the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... carved from the solid rock—were in darkness, but from the upper window of Avice's tiny freehold glimmered a light. Its rays were repeated from the far-distant sea by the lightship lying moored over the mysterious Shambles quicksand, which brought tamelessness and domesticity into due ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... blouses might be concentrated at any point where their presence is required, and that, too, with arms in their hands furnished from secret arsenals; and thus would those pitiable slaughters of helpless insurgents, like those of sheep in the shambles, we have so often witnessed, be avoided, if nothing besides were gained. The people are ever but too ready to pour out their blood, and the most difficult and delicate task in our enterprise is, after all, ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... everybody now believes to have been also liars and murderers, the offal of gaols and brothels, the leavings of the hangman's whip and shears, Catholics guilty of nothing but their religion were led like sheep to the Protestant shambles, where were the loyal Tory gentry and the passively obedient clergy? And where, when the time of retribution came, when laws were strained and juries packed to destroy the leaders of the Whigs, when charters were invaded, when Jeffreys and Kirke ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... stood and looked at this horrible shooting match, a human shambles, suddenly I was seized and pushed along, with the young girl beside me, towards the wall. Horror took possession of me. "I am Chief Servitor at the Hotel de Ville," I cried. "Let me go! It will ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... being led like a sheep to the shambles," he declared, "and you go like a sheep. You should have landed in France, where you have friends. Even now it is not too late. ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... locks Will lift his weary face to say: "War was a fiend who stopped our clocks Although we met him grim and gay." And then he'll speak of Haig's last drive, Marvelling that any came alive Out of the shambles that men built And smashed, to cleanse the world of guilt. But the boys, with grin and sidelong glance, Will think, "Poor grandad's day is done." And dream of lads who fought in France And lived in ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon

... show and virtue. Now at oppos'd Abydos naught was heard But bleating flocks, and many a bellowing herd, Slain for the nuptials; cracks of falling woods; Blows of broad axes; pourings out of floods. The guilty Hellespont was mix'd and stain'd With bloody torrent that the shambles rain'd; Not arguments of feast, but shows that bled, Foretelling that red night that followed. More blood was spilt, more honours were addrest, Than could have graced any happy feast; Rich banquets, triumphs, every pomp employs His ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

... bird with his strong beak. The shrike's bloodthirstiness was seen in the fact that he did not stop to devour his prey, but went in quest of more, as if opening a market of goldfinches. The thicket was his shambles, and if not interrupted, he might have had a fine display of ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... greater number lay dead on or about the rocky platform, where the fiercest of the fighting had been. They had slain each other as well as having been slain by the Prince's band, and the place was now a veritable shambles, at which some of the lads began to look with ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... off the necks of the bottles, poured the stuff out into tumblers, and were just tossing them off, when in an instant without warning there came the roar of muskets in our ears, and the saloon was so full of smoke that we could not see across the table. When it cleared again the place was a shambles. Wilson and eight others were wriggling on the top of each other on the floor, and the blood and the brown sherry on that table turn me sick now when I think of it. We were so cowed by the sight that I think we should have given the job up if it had not been for Prendergast. He bellowed ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... districts. In France, for example, the peasantry are cattle; in time of peace crushed with forced labour, feudal burdens, and imposts of all kinds; in time of war driven, in unwilling masses, half-armed and helpless, to the shambles. Aristocratic luxury, gambling, profligate wars—Jacques Bonhomme pays for them all. At Crecy and Poictiers, the lords are taken prisoners; have to provide heavy ransoms, which, being debts of honour, like gambling debts, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... dead beside his father, and the corpses of the flower of Zodangan nobility and chivalry covered the floor of the bloody shambles. ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Beggars' squadron. The two captured vessels lay together, almost wrecks, and it was evident, from the way the pumps were going, that they could with difficulty be kept afloat. We went up the side of one of them. I had witnessed several sad scenes, but my heart sickened when I beheld the perfect shambles the deck had in a short time become. It seemed as if the whole of her crew must have been shot down by the guns ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... Far be the thought of this from Henry's heart, To make a shambles of the parliament-house! Cousin of Exeter, frowns, words, and threats Shall be the war ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... round turn on leaving the breakwater, as right ahead on the starboard bow was a small light-ship, looking like the skeleton of a vessel, and marking the presence of a dangerous shoal, known by the most appropriate and significant name of "The Shambles." Inside this lay a long and turbid ridge of angry water, where the Race of Portland ran, and where a deep rolling swell, like the Bay of Biscay on a reduced scale, kept tumbling and breaking into spray like drifts ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne

... been. They were not far beneath her—she could see them distinctly and she saw that there were the bodies of both men and women, and that they were beautifully proportioned, and that their skin was similar to hers, but of a slightly lighter red. At first she had thought that she was looking upon a shambles and that the bodies, but recently decapitated, were moving under the impulse of muscular reaction; but presently she realized that this was their normal condition. The horror of them fascinated her, so that she could scarce take her eyes from them. It was evident from ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... on the stairs, but we groped our way through, guided by the sounds within. Barraclough struck a match and shed a light on the scene. For an instant it flared and sputtered, discovering to us the situation in that cockpit. The place was a shambles. Grant was at bay in a corner, the cook lay dead, and half a dozen mutineers were struggling in the foreground with some persons I could not see: while through the broken boards of the windows other men were climbing. With an oath Barraclough dropped his match and rushed forward. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... sufferings of slavery to dread it for her child. Her thoughts dwelt so much on this painful subject, that her naturally cheerful character became extremely saddened. She at last determined to make a bold effort to save her little one from the liability of being sold, like a calf or pig in the shambles. She went to see Isaac T. Hopper and communicated to him her plan. He tried to dissuade her; for he considered the project extremely dangerous, and well nigh hopeless. But the mother's heart yearned for her babe, and the incessant ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... I evade the stroke of Death That rends all ties asunder? Do not his awful shambles gape For ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... the erstwhile Artemous Ward would call a "yewmerous" paper, and is published solely for the benefit of bad barbers. When you take your seat in the butcher's shambles he provides you with a copy of Puck because its jokes are so excruciatingly painful that it pulls your piligerous annex out with a stump-extractor and rubbed aqua fortis into your face with a bath brick, the physical ill would be forgotten in the mental agony. I never saw ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... personal appearance would not have recommended him to a painter in search of a model for the Good Shepherd of traditional art. In eliminating undesirable specimens from the flock, Snarley was as ruthless as Nature; and when the butcher's man drove them off to the shambles he would watch their departure without a qualm. It was certainly said that he would never slaughter a sheep with his own hands, not even when death was merciful; on the other hand, he would sternly execute, by shooting, any dog that showed a tendency to ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... the way. An officer in the king's service appeared in the village to draw the conscripts for the army, and the young men trembled like penned-up sheep at the entrance of the blood-stained butcher, not knowing who would be seized for the shambles. The officer had apparently been a friend and companion of Schoenfeld's in former days, and passed some time at his house. It was perhaps only a coincidence, but it struck the neighbors as very odd at least, that Carl Proch was the first man drawn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... of their pleasure and delight that it makes him take in that way to hell in which he walketh. (Isa. 66:3; Prov. 7:22, 23) Never went fat ox so gamesomely to the shambles, nor fool so merrily to the correction of the stocks, nor silly bird so wantonly to the hidden net, as iniquity makes men go down her steps to the pit of hell and damnation. O it is amazing, it is astonishing to consider ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... hating one's fellow-men were required, the strike which burst upon the industrial world that winter must furnish it in sickening excess. But other facts, too, were rendered glaringly patent by that same desperate clash which made Avon a shambles and transformed its fair name into a by-word, to be spoken only in hushed whispers when one's thought dwells for a moment upon the madness of the carnal mind that has once tasted blood. The man-cleft chasm between labor and capital, that still unbridged void which separates ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... the little gray broncho to pick her own dainty way out of the shambles about her feet. Then, once free from the litter of men and horses, he turned her head to the spot where, he had been told, his squadron were gathering together their diminished forces. As he rode slowly onward, he was surprised to see how low the sun had dropped. The fighting must have lasted longer ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... had no sword, but the blow he gave him silenced his foul tongue for a week. Instantly the room was turned into a shambles. 'Twas no time to mince words or blows, and we did neither. Nor were we two left alone to withstand all the rest; for the gentleman of the party (whom I have mentioned), sided with us, as did also the sea captain, who owed mine host a long score, and saw a good way to cry quits without shortening ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... Europa's decks, we now beheld dismounted guns, shattered, blood-splashed bulwarks, cut rigging hanging everywhere in bights, and shot-scored decks cumbered with dead and dying men—a veritable shambles. Mynheer Van Halst could not tell us the precise extent of the ship's losses in killed and wounded, for there had been no time thus far to ascertain it. The sound members of the crew were still busily engaged in the terrible task of separating the wounded ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... opposite side he prepared a banquet. Then he sent his chariots and horsemen to Agamemnon, and invited him to the feast, but he meant foul play. He got him there, all unsuspicious of the doom that was awaiting him, and killed him when the banquet was over as though he were butchering an ox in the shambles; not one of Agamemnon's followers was left alive, nor yet one of Aegisthus', but they were all killed there ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... We have seen them, a pack of hungry sea-wolves, surround a Bowhead whale! A number of these brigands of the Bering Sea hang on to the lower lip of the big whale till the opened mouth allows a Killer to enter bodily, when the Bowhead's tongue is eaten out and the whole sea is a shambles. At the approach of the Killer even sea-lions seek the shore. And the Alaska Indian who would pose as Bad Bill of the Clambank to the third generation carves a Killer as the ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... to kill his game clean, were it beast or bird. In thought, he had always loathed the trade of a butcher, and had certainly never guessed that soldiering could be—as here in San Sebastian he had seen it—more bestial than the shambles. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... consort. As soon as she reached the side of the Juno she was hove to, and a boat was sent off at once. An officer stepped on board. He was horrified at the scene of carnage which presented itself. The ship aloft was a wreck, the decks were a perfect shambles, wounded and dying men lay around in every position. The masts were gone, the ship was full of shot-holes, the water was rushing and gurgling in through the shot-holes below the waterline, flames ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... the flints, don't you, Jill? Personally, my doctor bled me just before I came away. But don't let me stop you others. Lead on, brother—lead the way to the shambles!" ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... they're the roughest lot I've ever seen cooped up together. If they should be turned loose, they would make a shambles of this ship—a red ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... draw back from my approach with cries of terror; and if I was amazed at the change, I was truly embarrassed when I learnt its reason. One of the pigs had been that morning killed; Catholicus had seen the murder, he had discovered he was dwelling in the shambles, and from that time his confidence and his delight in life were ended. We still reserved him a long while, but he could not endure the sight of any two-legged creature, nor could we, under the circumstances, encounter his eye without confusion. I have assisted besides, by the ear, at the act ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... whose depths the blackness of darkness broods." And all this, again, is true. These are the ways in which the Tempter works. But is there nothing but this to explain the power which evil has upon men, in the midst of the great city? These manifold allurements, these haunts of infamy and shambles of destruction—I see them standing upon strange foundations. I see them propped by these very influences to which I have alluded; influences of social condition and individual example. They would not be so formidable, they would not stand so long, were it not that respectability in its ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... interested in the degree of your vice or your folly; but it is plain, that the one or the other has conducted you hither, and that your best hope of peace, safety, and happiness, is to be gone, with the least possible delay, from a place which is always a sty for swine, and often a shambles." So ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... these amusements of the Netherlanders as elevated and humanizing as the contemporary bull-fights and autos-da-fe of Spain? What place in history does the gloomy bigot merit who, for the love of Christ, converted all these gay cities into shambles, and changed the glittering processions of their Land jewels into fettered ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... To see their Shambles, and to view all such things as are brought into the Markets, for so you shall soone see the commodities, and the maner of the people of the inland, and so giue ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... seems, had a custom to blow up their meat with pipes to make it look thicker and fatter than it was, and were punished there for it by the Lord Mayor); I say, from the end of the street towards Newgate there stood two long rows of shambles for ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... swarmed over the walls and ceiling by hundreds. My cell-mate was wise in the ways of the beasts. Like Childe Roland, dauntless the slug-horn to his lips he bore. Never was there such a battle. It lasted for hours. It was shambles. And when the last survivors fled to their brick-and-mortar fastnesses, our work was only half done. We chewed mouthfuls of our bread until it was reduced to the consistency of putty. When a fleeing belligerent escaped ...
— The Road • Jack London

... Stephen said. Not for nothing was he a butcher's son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in his palms. Nine lives are taken off for his father's one. Our Father who art in purgatory. Khaki Hamlets don't hesitate to shoot. The bloodboltered shambles in act five is a forecast of the concentration ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the date 1646, another with a thatched roof on the south side of Eastgate, dated 1677, is now fast going to ruin. The roofs were no doubt at that time chiefly covered with thatch, and the whole town must have been extremely picturesque. The stocks, the shambles, and the market cross stood in the centre of the town, and there were none of the unpleasant features that modern ideas, unchecked by a sense of fitness and ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... sweet and wholesome. All day long we travelled thus through this horrible flood, while the spray driven by the strong north wind spotted our flesh and garments, till we were like butchers reeking from the shambles. Nor could we eat any food because of the stench from this spray, which made it to taste salt as does fresh blood, only we drank of the water which I had provided, and the rowers who had held me to be mad now named me the wisest of men; one who knew what would ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... imagination. Whatever grandeur can display, or luxury enjoy, is procured by baseness, by offices of which the mind shrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the shambles and the dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornaments dug from among the damps and darkness ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... life he had to face, a life that held nothing but frustration and denial of all that was necessary to him, which was making him suffer as acutely as he had ever suffered in the field, under the knives of callous surgeons, in the shambles of the front line or the ether-scented dressing stations. There is morphine for a tortured body, but there is no opiate for agony of the spirit, the sharp-toothed pain that stabs at a lonely ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... to clear the shambles every man of the ten thousand who had fallen was dead—save two. The salvage corps walked in a muck of blood. They slipped and stumbled and fell in its festering pools. The flies and vultures were busy. Dead horses, dead men, smashed guns, legs, arms, mangled bodies disemboweled, ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... they manage their baskets, and so jauntily carry their bags. Their instructor furthermore informed them of the different places at which they were to make their appearance daily: in the morning at the shambles, and at the market of St. Salvador; on fast-days at the fish-market; every afternoon on the quay, and ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... if he be able, let him picture those objects, in comparison with which all that earth has to give is valueless in his eyes, torn from him by violence, basely exchanged for gold, like beasts at the shambles, bent down under unpitied sorrows, their persons polluted, and their pure hearts corrupted—hopeless and unpitied slaves, to the rude caprice and brutal passions of those we blush to call men. Let him turn from these spectacles, and look abroad on the heritage where his lot has been cast, glad ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown

... Birds were singing in the garden trees; all else was quiet, as if men were not waking to slay each other and pass unconfessed to their account. There came on me a great sickness of war. Yesterday the boulevard of Les Augustins, when the fight was over, had been a shambles; white bodies that had been stripped of their armour lay here and there like sheep on a hillside, and were now smirched with dust, a thing unseemly. I put it to myself that I was engaged, if ever man was, in a righteous ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... been carefully drilled to believe that she is an emotional creature. If a dozen people conspire to tell a man that he is looking badly, it is not unlikely that he will feel ill. Certainly Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton exhibited no lack of firmness on the shambles of battlefields; and there are few men living who cannot recall instances of women who have, in the face of disaster and evil fortune, shown a steady perseverance and will-power in earning a living for themselves and their children that men have ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... curiously carved, and which, in some measure, hang over the street, the upper end of the lattice projecting much more than the lower. Within, the houses are exceedingly mean and dirty, and swarm with vermin, which, added to all manner of filth, including the offals of the shambles, and the blood of sacrifices, that is allowed to corrupt in the streets, renders an abode in any ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... that he had not courage to attend it, or inclination to witness any man's sorrows but his own. He met the wedding party by accident, and was heard to exclaim with a sigh, as they flaunted past him in gay exuberance of spirits—"Ah, poor Neal! he is going like one of her father's cattle to the shambles! Woe is me for having suggested matrimony to the tailor! He will not long-be under the necessity of saying that he 'is blue-moulded for want of a beating.' The butcheress will fell him like a Kerry ox, and I may have his blood to answer ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... sing inexplicably dumb; Wednesday was dull. The ladies, who had been pretty free in their criticisms of the Boers, were saying hard things of people nearer home. They had a grievance against the butcher and his manipulation of the meat. The clamour at the shambles of the butcher despot was growing in volume. Hungry masses crowded the shops, and that some should emerge meatless from the melee was inevitable. Nepotism was reputed to be much in vogue. The Colonel had curbed ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... in the world. This was in 1225. In 1226 the first friars settled in England. They multiplied rapidly because of their rigorous discipline. Soon there were to be found among them some of the most eminent men in England. Their chief house stood in London in a spot called Stinking Lane, near the Shambles in Newgate, and there, amidst poverty, hunger, cold, and filth, these men passed their lives in nursing horrible lepers, so loathsome that they were rejected by all but themselves, while Arnold lived in magnificence in his palace, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... was too appalled to strike the creature. He, whose whole career on the sea had been that of a bucko driver in a shambles, could not strike this fractured splinter of a man. I swear that Mr. Pike actually struggled with himself to strike. I saw it. But ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... wrong to spare them—fatal error! 75 Why lived Legendre, when that Danton died? And Collot d'Herbois dangerous in crimes? I've fear'd him, since his iron heart endured To make of Lyons one vast human shambles, Compar'd with which the sun-scorcht wilderness 80 Of Zara were ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the duty of marrying their deceased brothers' wives. He superintended a slaughtering department, licensed men as competent killers, examined the sharpness of their knives that the victims might be put to as little pain as possible, and inspected dead cattle in the shambles to see if they were perfectly sound and free from pulmonary disease. But his greatest function was paskening, or answering inquiries ranging from the simplest to the most complicated problems of ceremonial ethics and civil law. He had added a volume of Shaaloth-u-Tshuvoth, or "Questions ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Unheard of!" cried his brother, beside himself at the sight that met his eyes. "A battle-field! What do I say? The peaceful house of a Roman citizen turned into shambles. Fifteen, twenty, thirty bodies on the grass! And the sunshine plays as brightly on the pools of blood and the arms of the soldiers as if it rejoiced in it all. But there—Oh, brother! our Marcipor—there lies our dear old Marci!—and beside him the basket of roses he had fetched for the lady ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... sees it is a dog—a huge sandy mastiff, with hanging jaws, wet with foam, a great square head, and broad noiseless feet. It shambles nearer, appearing so suddenly out of the gloom that it seems to materialise before her vision. It watches her as if about to spring; she cannot remember it is not a ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... went to the deck of the bridge and looked down on a curious scene. The main deck was a shambles. There were a score of corpses there, pitching about stiffly to the roll of the ship, with no one offering to touch them. There were a score more of sick, shrieking and knotting themselves in their agony. The survivors were in two sorts of panic—the comatose, and the madly violent. A crowd ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... carefully prepared plan goes as it was intended to go, the rest of the plan must necessarily move with equal success along its appointed lines. Though Maleotti was as sure as if he had seen it of our slaughter in the forest shambles, there came no moment in that journey of ours through the darkness of the wood when Messer Griffo, drawing his sword, thundered an appointed order, and forces of destruction were let loose upon the ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... courage revived: he hurled himself against the door; it gave with a crash, and the next moment he was inside. But what a sight met his eyes! The place, which somehow or the other seemed oddly familiar to him, was a veritable shambles—floor, walls, and furniture were sodden with blood. In every corner were mangled human remains; whilst stretched on the ground, opposite the doorway, lay the body of Martha, her face unrecognizable and her breast and stomach ripped right open. This was terrible enough, but more ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... city. This young man had read Labarthe and other writers on archaeology, and was enthusiastic in finding relics of the olden time. He took me into a great many private houses. I visited every church, and indeed saw far more than do the great majority of even the most inquiring visitors. The Shambles was then and is still perhaps one of the most curious specimens of a small mediaeval street in the world. I felt as if I could pass a life in the museum and churches, and I did, in fact, years after, remain there, very busy, for three weeks, sketching innumerable corbels, gargoyles, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... that, if for a moment she entered any bedroom having obviously no outlet, her fate would be that of an ox once driven within the shambles. Outside, the bullock might make some defence with his horns; but once in, with no space for turning, he is muffled and gagged. She carried her eye, therefore, like a hawk's, steady, though restless, for vigilant examination of every angle she turned. Before she entered any bedroom, she ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... part to run away like this? The question came to her suddenly as if someone else had asked it. She thought of the shambles of the Flanders front—she thought of her brother and her playmate helping to hold those fire-swept trenches. What would they think of her if she shirked her little duty here—the humble duty of ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... knife in such a connection, without a sting of remorse at the idea of the mother's grief—her great eyes swimming in tears, her lowing cries haunting him for days? I never see a gang of these helpless little creatures driven to the shambles without thinking of that touching picture, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... self-made men of the need of the social graces for their sons, and nine out of ten stampede—for all the world as though it were suggested to put them in petticoats. Do they think a poor unlettered lout who shambles at the door, who stands unable to speak, who turns his cap in his hands, who sidles into the room, and can't for the life of him get out again, well trained for the battle ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... to Simoorie where, lapped in his ease, The Captain is petting the Bride on his knees, Where the whit of the bullet, the wounded man's scream Are mixed as the mist of some devilish dream— Forgotten, forgotten the sweat of the shambles Where the hill-daisy blooms and the gray monkey gambols, From the sword-belt set free and released from the steel, The Peace of the Lord is with Captain O'Neil. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... unborn children? It's been my sole study. How could you fancy I spoke hastily, or without due consideration on such a subject? Would you have me like the blind girls who go unknowing to the altar, as sheep go to the shambles? Could you suspect me of such carelessness?—such culpable thoughtlessness?—you, to whom I have spoken ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... an altar there, with an everlasting fire burning on it; but why should that altar, and all the ground around be crusted and black with blood; why should that dark place be like a charnel house or a butcher's shambles; why, from all the trees around, should there be hanging the rotting carcases, not of goats and horses merely, but of MEN, sacrificed to Thor and Odin, the thunder and the wind? Why that butchery, why those works of darkness in the dark ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley

... throughout the greater part of every night, for the first three days of the battle of the Aisne, September 13, 14, and 15, 1914, the bombardment of Soissons was continual, and, in addition to being a wreck, the town became a shambles. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... whom they employed in the tedious, laborious and responsible office of driving the cattle for many hundred miles, from the market where they had been purchased, to the fields or farm-yards where they were to be fattened for the shambles. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various

... the British consul. "They stole her back, gentlemen, and when Captain O'Hara found her rolling helplessly and boarded her, she was a shambles. Dead men tell no tales, Mr. Ricks—yet it was impossible for any fair-minded man to doubt the testimony of the dead men aboard your Narcissus! Her killed, wounded and prisoners formed a perfect alibi. In the meantime, Mr. Reardon and Captain Murphy are ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... Anglo-Irishmen of the Pale were being brought to trial for treason, and hung or beheaded in batches. Kildare was sent to England to die in the Tower. With the exception of the North, which on this occasion had kept quiet, the whole country had become one great reeking shambles; what sword and rope and torch had spared, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... In the Maribyrnong Plate, twelve horses were jammed at the second wall. Red Hat, leading, fell this side, and threw out The Gled, and the ruck came up behind and the space between wing and wing was one struggling, screaming, kicking shambles. Four jockeys were taken out dead; three were very badly hurt, and Brunt was among the three. He told the story of the Maribyrnong Plate sometimes; and when he described how Whalley on Red Hat, said, as the mare fell under him—"God ha' mercy, I'm done for!" and how, next ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... had been apprehended for picking purses. Apparently he underwent no regular trial, but was dealt with summarily, the programme being as follows: First, he was imprisoned several days and nights, and then he was nailed by the ear to a post at the flesh-shambles. As the next item, he was turned out naked from the middle upwards, and many boys, with withy rods, whipped him out of the town. He was then locked to a clog with an iron chain and horseblock until the Friday morning following, and finally ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... notice of the occurrence. But Mr. Mackenzie appealed to a jury, who, "to the no small discomfiture of the tories, from Sir Peregrine Maitland, down to the lowest menial employed in the political shambles," gave exemplary damages. This had some effect, but not the weight which punishment for the crime would have produced. The risk of having to pay for damages would certainly not have prevented similar violence. The employees or relatives of the Executive Councillors, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... they arrived at the playground, which lay north of the covered Meat Market or Shambles, "it looks as if they hadn't been able to make a start yet at the Blood Tub." His tone was marked by a calm, grand disdain, as of ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... more ghastly sight than that which my eyes then rested upon I never saw. The gate-way of the Citadel was a very shambles. Piles of dead men lay all around me; and the prodigious number of the enemy lying slain there testified with a mute eloquence to the desperate fashion in which our handful of men had fought. Over the rough pavement, down the slope towards the lake, there flowed a stream of bright ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... spoken of—has been arraigned, condemned and executed. The aristocrats are in full emigratory flight across the frontiers—those that have not been rent by the vassals they had brought to bay, the people they had outraged. The Lilies of France lie trampled under foot in the shambles they have made of that fair land, whilst overhead the tricolour—that symbol of the new trinity, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—is flaunted ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... made their way to the captain's cabin, whence they opened fire upon the savages on deck. The Indians fled instantly, leaving many of their dead aboard the ship. The decks of the Tonquin had been turned into shambles. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... three families, the Legoix, the St. Yons, and the Thiberts, had exercised absolute mastery in the market district, which in turn exercised mastery over nearly the whole city. "One Caboche, a flayer of beasts in the shambles of Hotel-Dieu, and Master John de Troyes, a surgeon with a talent for speaking, were their most active associates. Their company consisted of 'prentice-butchers, medical students, skinners, tailors, and every ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... from the farmhouse eaves The locust, pulse-beat of the summer day, Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leaves Limp with the heat—a league of rutty way— Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hay Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves— Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain, In thirsty heaven or on burning plain, That ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... attired, snatching her cloak, she threw it about her arms and thrust her wet feet into her shoes. "Out upon thee!" she said; "is it not enough, then, that thou shouldst break thy troth for Swanhild's sake, that thou shouldst slay my brother and turn my hall to shambles? Wouldst now steal upon ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... it. And yet, in this little Rose-garden of ours—the Human Soul -we tramp down the flowers, plant loathsome weeds and poisons that kill and degrade and besot us, set up the tables of the money-changers, drive out the doves of Hesperides, and turn the temple into a shambles for wild beasts. "Nothing pays." ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... undertaking spirit, they would not suffer to live. These two lights thus put out, they would neither fear nor value any opposite in the kingdom. The small dispersed garrisons must either through hunger submit themselves to their mercy, or be penned up as sheep to the shambles. They held the castle of Dublin for their own, neither manned nor victualled, and readily surprised. The towns were for them, the country with them, the great ones abroad prepared to answer the first alarm. The Jesuits warranted from the Pope ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... also that the people of that country eat their meat raw, whether it be of mutton, beef, buffalo, poultry, or any other kind. Thus the poor people will go to the shambles, and take the raw liver as it comes from the carcase and cut it small, and put it in a sauce of garlic and spices, and so eat it; and other meat in like manner, raw, just as we eat meat that is ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... although a print showing the numbers fixed upon the slope was published in 1778. The market-place has lost its curious old tolbooth, and in its place stands a town hall of good Tudor design. Departed also is much of the charm of the old Shambles that occupy a central position in the square. The lower story, with big arches forming a sort of piazza in front of the butcher's and other shops, still remains in its old state, but the upper portion has been restored in the fullest sense ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... London, and shortly afterwards his eyes are torn out in the Islet of Ely, and he dies of the anguish! That ye should love Earl Godwin withal may be strange, but yet possible. But is it possible, cher Envoy, for the King to love the man who thus betrayed his brother to the shambles?" ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... been remarked with astonishment, as a matter almost inexplicable, how it has arisen that so many gallant men, at the head of every regiment, should have suffered themselves to be slaughtered like sheep in a butcher's shambles. Surely five-and-twenty or thirty men, in youthful vigour, many of them capital shots, could easily have shot down 150 of the cowardly sepoys. So much work they could have finished with their revolvers. More than one amongst the ladies, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... the quarter held by the Government's loyal troops. One hundred and fifty-four shots were fired, two of the largest gunboats firing three-hundred and six- hundred pounders. Soon every square was a shambles, and the mud oozed with blood. The Buenos Ayres Standard, describing that day of ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... Repair'd our Courts of Judicature, turning the Shambles where your Subjects were lately butcher'd, into a Tribunal, where they may now expect due Justice; and have furnish'd the Supreame seat there with a Chancelour of antient candor, rare experience; just, prudent, ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn

... when about half way there, God had mercy on her, and smote her with death. There were two girls named Edmundson in the same company. When about to be sent to the same market, an older sister went to the shambles, to plead with the wretch who owned them, for the love of God, to spare his victims. He bantered her, telling what fine dresses and fine furniture they would have. 'Yes,' she said, 'that may do very well in this life, but what will become of them in the next?' They too were ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... traffick and to control. All the cotton mills are theirs, and theirs the finest houses in the most beautiful sites. When that conflict begins between the Hindus and the Mohammedans which will render India a waste and a shambles, it is the Parsees who will occupy the high places—until ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... flesh is now the great staple of Virginia, In the legislature of this State, in 1833, Thomas Jefferson Randolph declared that Virginia had been converted into 'one grand menagerie, where men are reared for the market, like oxen for the shambles.' This same gentleman thus compared the foreign with the domestic traffic: 'The trader (African) receives the slave, a stranger in aspect, language and manner, from the merchant who brought him from the interior. But here, sir, individuals ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... or read of the cannibals of Natal, who turned large tracts of country into a shambles in the early part of this century, after Tshaka's impis had swept off all the cattle, and then kept the miserable people continually on the move so that they were unable to cultivate. One Umdava originated the practice of eating human flesh. Gathering together the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... mysterious peril the woods; No life-giving fountains, but only bare sands, Or some deep-bedded river that silently moves, With a wave that is livid and stagnant, between Its margins ungladdened by grass or by flowers, And in sterile sands vanishes wholly away. Out of huts that by turns have been shambles and tombs, All pallid and naked, and burned by their fevers, The peasant folk suddenly stare as you pass, With visages ghastly, and eyes full of hate, Aroused by the accent that's strange to their ears. Oh, heavily hang the clouds here on the head! Wan and ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... odour of burning flesh and the thick smoke hanging over the altar tell that the rite is complete. What a scene it must have been when, as on some great occasions, hundreds of burnt offerings were offered in succession! The place and the attendants would look to us liker shambles and butchers than ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... one who should offer the natives violence or injustice of any kind. It must be remembered to her credit that in after days, when slavery and an intolerable bloody and brutish oppression had turned the paradise of Espanola into a shambles, she fought almost singlehanded, and with an ethical sense far in advance of her day, against the system of slavery practised by Spain upon the inhabitants of the ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... rich border of woodland. The sun was too hot to permit of the excursion Dick suggested, and late in the afternoon the wheezy ferry carried them down the lake-like stream. On every hand there were signs of peace—not a fort, not a breastwork gave token that this was in a few months to be the shambles of mighty armies, the anchorage of that new wonder, the iron battle-ship; the scene of McClellan's miraculous victory at Malvern, of Grant's slaughtering grapplings with rebellion at bay, of Butler's comic joustings, and the last desperate onslaughts of Hancock's legions. The air, tempered ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... upon this wise, Saviour; and out of east and west were led To thy foul cradle by thy planet red Shepherds of souls that feed their sheep with lies Till the utter soul die as the body dies, And the wise men that ask but to be fed Though the hot shambles be their board and bed And sleep on any dunghill shut their eyes, So they lie warm and fatten in the mire: And the high priest enthroned yet in thy name, Judas, baptised thee with men's blood for hire; And now thou hangest nailed to thine own shame In sight ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... passes through a wicket, and coasts a great wood for some hundred yards, then turns sharply and soon reaches the "Russian Cottage", a chalet "put together without nails", near by which is the well-known "Shambles Oak" or "Robin Hood's Larder", so called because in its hollow interior once were hooks for the storing of stolen venison. Unfortunately this fine tree was fired by some holiday-makers years ago, and to-day there is something pathetic in the valiant greenness of its scanty leaves. ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist

... my laboratory table at Kartabo, and looked down river to the pink roof of Kalacoon, and my mind went back to the shambles of Pit Number Five.[1] I was wondering whether I should ever see the army ants in any guise other than that of scouting, battling searchers for living prey, when a voice of the jungle seemed to hear ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... The shambles was not yet over, but the four could remain no longer. They made their way down the hillside and struck ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... the Turks, were such woes as men had never seen before. The Infandous Blindness and Vileness which then came upon mankind, and the Monstrous Croisadoes which thereupon carried the Roman World by Millions together unto the Shambles; were also such woes as had never yet had a Parallel. And yet these were some of the things here intended, when it was said, Wo! For the Devil is come down in great Wrath, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... Nocolas. The Church of St. Nicholas Shambles, which formerly stood in the neigbourhood of Newgate Market, was pulled down at the Reformation. See Cunningham, Handbook of London, ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown

... done this work, and redded up the boat, I looked rather anxiously at Santa, who had been watching me: for I feared the effect this scene of shambles might have upon her. She sat, with Farrell's head resting against her knee, and still gazed unmoved. . . . Then I knew why. She had passed beyond these vain phenomena. Her eyes saw them and saw them not. . . . She ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... weapon &c (arms) 727; Aceldama^. [Destruction of animals] 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. V. kill, put to death, slay, shed blood; murder, assassinate, butcher, slaughter, victimize, immolate; massacre; take away life, deprive of life; make away with, put an end to; despatch, dispatch; burke, settle, do for. strangle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget



Words linked to "Shambles" :   building, butchery, edifice, disorder, disorderliness



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