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The word for today is…
shambles (noun):
1 archaic : a meat market
2: slaughterhouse
3a: a place of mass slaughter or bloodshed
b: a scene or a state of great destruction : wreckage
c(1): a scene or a state of great disorder or confusion
(2): great confusion : mess
Source : Merriam -Webster
Etymology : The story of shambles appears to be a bit of a shambles: somehow, a word meaning “footstool” gave us a word meaning “mess.” It all starts with the Latin word scamillum, the diminutive of scamnum, meaning “stool, bench.” Modify the spelling and you get the Old English word sceamol, meaning “stool.” Alter again to the Middle English word shameles (the plural of schamel), and give it a more specific meaning: “a vendor’s table.” Tweak that a little and you arrive at the 15th-century term shambles, meaning “meat market.” A century or so takes shambles from “meat market” to “slaughterhouse,” then to figurative application as a term referring to a place of terrible slaughter or bloodshed (say, a battlefield). The grim connotations fade over time, but the messiness remains, and voilà: the modern sense of shambles meaning “mess” or “state of great confusion.”. The area of York, UK called Shambles was an open air slaughterhouse and meat market probably before the 14th century when the area was first recorded as such.
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