(n.) One of a succession of niches or platforms, one above another, to hold ore which is thrown successively from platform to platform, and thus raised to a higher level.
(n.) A place where butcher's meat is sold.
(n.) A place for slaughtering animals for meat.
(v. i.) To walk awkwardly and unsteadily, as if the knees were weak; to shuffle along.
Example Sentences:
(1) Staff had to make paper records of 999 calls in what one ambulance crew member described as “a shambles”.
(2) David Winnick, the MP for Walsall North, said: "None of [May's] excuses can explain away the sheer incompetence and shambles that have occurred on her watch."
(3) The leader of the RMT rail union, Bob Crow, said: "The whole sorry and expensive shambles of rail privatisation has been dragged into the spotlight this morning and instead of re-running this expensive circus, the west coast route should be renationalised on a permanent basis."
(4) It would be a travesty if their first experience of democracy was this shambles.
(5) Dan Barron blames this result on the maroon jerseys, while Greg Phillips nominates the theme to Ronnie Corbett vehicle Sorry as the perfect Hazlehurst soundtrack for this shambles.
(6) Ball's camp, meanwhile, denied that he was seeking a right of veto over the non-executive chairman, describing the process as "a shambles" in which the former BSkyB executive was presented with a fait accompli rather than being properly consulted about who he should work with.
(7) In his piece, Gove criticises historians and TV programmes that denigrate patriotism and courage by depicting the war as a "misbegotten shambles".
(8) The government’s overhaul of primary-school assessments has turned into a shambles, according to the teachers who will have to carry them out from next month, with complaints that seven- and 11-year-old pupils find the new standards too hard and too confusing.
(9) As Longford (Channel 4), he seemed to be playing not just the shambling man but his shining soul.
(10) Philip Hammond needs to get a grip and sort this shambles out."
(11) He can build on material we have collected but reaching a fair outline in three months seems impossible – but I don’t think that is his objective anyway.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Christopher Pyne says Labor has left the Coalition with a shambles and a $1.2bn shortfall.
(12) One publisher, unwilling to speak on the record, agreed, saying that "the consensus does seem to be that the Booker this year is a bit of a shambles", with the panel "lacking in authority" and "a bit confused about what the prize is for".
(13) Lloyd George, Gladstone, Churchill - he reluctantly resigned at 80 in 1955 after a four-year rearguard action – Thatcher of course, Macmillan too, were shambles.
(14) Photograph: Fabio De Paola Roxanne McMurray, spokesperson for the advocacy group SOS Women’s Services, told Background Briefing that following last year’s reforms, services across the state were in a shambles.
(15) It was on the 37th lap of the 61-lap race that a man was seen shambling along the side of the track on the straight near turn 13.
(16) Related story Dome management was 'shambles' Related special report The Millennium Dome Useful links The full National Audit Office report Executive summary of the report
(17) Dromey called the law "a shambles", benefiting neither candidates nor electors.
(18) My local authority is a shambles, so the sooner control is taken away from local government and administered nationally, the better, but I do worry about how they are going to work it all out.
(19) "Partly because I want to see Will Hughes in the top flight by getting there rather than waving from a Manchester subs bench, partly because they're far less of an expensive shambles than QPR, partly because Redknapps annoy me but mainly so it's really easy for me to watch Everton once a year."
(20) Ministers seem to be working hard to make their new police and crime commissioner elections a shambles – providing too little information, costly elections in cold dark November, the helpline not working , ballot papers reprinted .
Stumble
Definition:
(v. i.) To trip in walking or in moving in any way with the legs; to strike the foot so as to fall, or to endanger a fall; to stagger because of a false step.
(v. i.) To walk in an unsteady or clumsy manner.
(v. i.) To fall into a crime or an error; to err.
(v. i.) To strike or happen (upon a person or thing) without design; to fall or light by chance; -- with on, upon, or against.
(v. t.) To cause to stumble or trip.
(v. t.) Fig.: To mislead; to confound; to perplex; to cause to err or to fall.
(n.) A trip in walking or running.
(n.) A blunder; a failure; a fall from rectitude.
Example Sentences:
(1) Former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell, also weighed in for Clinton in a New York Times opinion piece on Friday, declaring: “Donald J Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.” Republicans stumbling from the wreckage of a terrible week are worrying about how to contain the damage further down the ballot paper in November as people running for seats in Congress and at state level risk being swept away.
(2) On Saturday I made my second trip to the campsite in Lower Stumble – my first journey was on 28 July.
(3) 11.10pm BST Apart from the stumbles in the sales pitch, it's still not clear how the Abbott government will secure most of its budget.
(4) CBS, which says it stumbled across its advance copy in a bookstore, happens to own the book's publisher, Simon & Schuster.
(5) However, the main stumbling block is the increasingly chronic shortage of many different types of medical staff – nurses, GPs, paramedics, radiologists, A&E doctors and many others – that the NHS is facing.
(6) The surprise move came after Tuesday's much-noticed stumble, when the US supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, jumbled the words, prompting Obama to follow suit.
(7) Myners – a non-executive director of Co-op group – was also scathing in his assessment of the board members after asking them a simple retail question and likening their inability to answer to that of Paul Flowers, former chairman of the Co-op bank, who had stumbled over basic questions posed by the Treasury select committee last year.
(8) Unfortunately, a lack of knowledge regarding the field among the general public and within the medical community as well functions as a major stumbling block to the growth of our profession.
(9) He may not be the greatest orator, sometimes stressing the wrong word in a sentence or stumbling over his Autocue, and he may not deliver media-managed soundbites with the ease that the PM does, but he is good with the public.
(10) Polls opened at 4am across the country, which suffered decades of army-led dictatorship followed by a stumbling reform process.
(11) Just a stepover here, a Cruyff turn there, and his opponent would be destroyed ... Only in real life, Boruc stumbled and bumbled and Olivier Giroud pounced to score.
(12) In the most uncomfortable and revelatory moments, Cameron stumbled as he was asked whether he saw Brooks every weekend in 2008 and 2009, before his wife Samantha told him in the lunchtime break that they had met every six weeks, or a bit more.
(13) He was like the man with staring eyes who stumbled up and down Oxford Street with a placard declaring the end of the world to be nigh.
(14) So intense was the pre‑match excitement in Dortmund over the return of the prodigal Jürg – much of it media-led – that walking around this flat, functional city on the afternoon of the game you half expected to stumble across Klopp shrines, New Orleans-style Klopp jazz funerals, to look up and find his great beaming visage looming over the city like some vast alien saucer.
(15) It is essential, therefore, that a legal agreement is agreed at the COP21 talks in order to create a process after Paris through which countries will review their efforts and find ways to ramp up their actions on reducing emissions.” A major stumbling block facing negotiators at Paris will be finance.
(16) Poyet will feel infinitely worse should Sunderland stumble once again at Spurs.
(17) There are pages where, unexpectedly, amid the horror, a reader feels he has stumbled on a near-inconsequential diary entry.
(18) She stumbled to her door, but found she could not walk out; she had to crawl as the ground swayed beneath her.
(19) Diane Abbott will continue to be a key figurehead in Labour’s general election campaign, the party has indicated, despite a stumbling radio performance in which she struggled to explain how a pledge to hire 10,000 extra police officers would be funded.
(20) But in that case, it will inevitably be harder to re-establish confidence in the intelligence on which the White House is basing its decisions, and the world's sole superpower risks stumbling onwards half-blind, unable to distinguish real threats from phantoms.