密歇根新闻广播 乱七八糟的正确解读法

（单词翻译）

If your life is in shambles¹, you probably have bigger things to worry about than grammar.

This week's topic comes from a listener who wanted to know the origin of in shambles.

Soon after we received this question, a co-worker told us she was surprised to learn this phrase, used to refer to a mess or state of disorder², was originally a shambles.

Shambles has an interesting etymology³. It was borrowed into West Germanic from Latin before it came into English. It first came into English as "shamel", one of its many early spellings, to refer to a footstool. In the 1400s, a "b" is added to the spelling, and we get "shamble."

In terms of meaning, in the Old English period, "shamel" referred to a table or a counter where someone could display goods or count money. In the 1300s, it comes to refer specifically to a table for selling meat.

In the 1400s, this word comes to refer to a meat market. This is also when the "b" gets added and the plural⁴ form starts to become common. Therefore, if someone said they were going to the shambles, it meant that they were going to a meat market.

Following that transition, "shambles" becomes a slaughterhouse. From there, it grows to refer to any bloody⁵ scene or place of carnage. By the 1900s, it takes on the weaker meaning of a mess or scene of disorder that many of us are familiar with today.

Here's a 1926 example from the book Microbe Hunters: "Once more his laboratory became a shambles of cluttered⁶ flasks⁷ and hurrying assistants..." Did you notice the "a" before "shambles" in this example? Like "measles⁸" and "gymnastics," "shambles" is one of those nouns that functions as a singular, even though there's an "s" at the end.

It was more common in the early 1900s to say "a shambles," but by the mid-1900s, "in shambles" starts to take off. That may be because of a re-understanding where people heard "in" instead of "a."