This is the sort of expression you might hear your parents or grandparents say when they walk into your bedroom!

A shambles is a right mess, but it used to mean something far more grisly and yucky. Have a guess at its origin!

Was a shambles:

A. A meat market full of blood and gore from slaughtered animals?

B. An area of ground where a particularly bloody battle has taken place?

C. An old ruin of a house believed to be haunted by an evil spirit?

ANSWER: A!

There is a street in the city of York which is called ‘The Shambles’. It was once the site of a row of butchers’ shops. It all goes back to a time when a ‘shamble’ was a wooden table on which fresh, bloody, meat was put out for sale.

Over time, a shambles came to mean a place where animals are slaughtered — a messy, bloody, horrible business — or the result of a fierce and violent battle (and so you weren’t completely wrong if you answered B!). And that’s why today, when we want to describe chaos, mess, or confusion, we look back to the time when a shambles was a scene of terrible killing.

Next time you’re forced to tidy your room, you can at least be happy it’s not covered in sticky blood and goo!