Shambles

Shamble is an old Anglo-Saxon word for stool or table and by the 1300s it had become a stall or table for the display and selling of meat. By the 1500s, the word was being used in its plural form and meant a slaughterhouse or a disorderly scene of carnage, as indeed meat markets sometimes were in those days. In its plural form the word then became synonymous with meat markets and today there is a narrow street in York still called The Shambles in memory of the chaotic meat market that once flourished there. By the 17th century, shambles had acquired its current figurative meaning of any disorderly or chaotic state of affairs.