How to Use shambolic in a Sentence

shambolic

adjective
  • As the film that Ryan shot makes clear, the results were shambolic.
    — Kevin Dettmar, The New Yorker, 16 June 2020
  • But as in Ukraine, the initial advance by the invaders was a shambolic mess.
    — John Fund, National Review, 6 Mar. 2022
  • The mass reinstatements were as shambolic as the mass firings had been.
    — E. Tammy Kim, The New Yorker, 25 Mar. 2025
  • Perhaps as a consequence, the season is more shambolic than the first.
    — Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 4 Apr. 2022
  • So luridly shambolic was Boursinos’s life that those who knew him warned me that his story would be hard to tell.
    — Martin McKenzie-Murray, SPIN, 7 Jan. 2025
  • But chaos isn’t out of place in the shambolic business career of a real estate heir who weaves in and out of peril.
    — Max Abelson, Fortune, 3 July 2021
  • The book’s shambolic rhythms pay off, as pressure slowly builds on Josh to join in instead of judging.
    — Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker, 30 Apr. 2026
  • But the way the cuts were handled was shambolic, suggesting a larger failure to plan for the future.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 11 Mar. 2021
  • Motsepe has been entrusted with lifting the sports body from its current shambolic state of affairs.
    — Daniel Ekonde, Quartz, 23 Mar. 2021
  • Soon, our characters are off to Australia, on a shambolic road trip, hunting gods and gurus.
    — Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker, 5 June 2017
  • An even greater danger may lie in the shambolic nature of his policymaking.
    — Bret Stephens, The Mercury News, 13 Mar. 2025
  • At one point, Norman meets his own double, in the shambolic person of Hank Azaria.
    — A. O. Scott, New York Times, 13 Apr. 2017
  • The industry’s return to office life, by contrast, has been shambolic.
    — Kate Kelly, New York Times, 23 Sep. 2020
  • The networks were on the hot seat because their election-night coverage had contributed to the chaos of that shambolic evening.
    — Jim Rutenberg, New York Times, 31 Oct. 2017
  • Its largely acoustic songs are sweet and all too brief, and affect a shambolic attitude that bolsters the earnestness at their hearts.
    — Leor Galil, Chicago Reader, 8 Sep. 2017
  • The scene unfolds with shambolic good humor, starting with an exchange that sends the company scrambling to sort out who’s who.
    — Rhoda Feng, Vulture, 23 Mar. 2026
  • The word refers to a situation that is seen as shambolic from all possible perspectives.
    — Andrew Stuttaford, National Review, 30 Oct. 2021
  • The latter, of course, likely lost an election on the back of his shambolic pandemic performance.
    — Washington Post, 22 Oct. 2021
  • That withdrawal brought to a shambolic end the longest war ever fought by the United States.
    — Foreign Affairs, 7 Jan. 2025
  • Central among her visions is a shambolic dwarf with flippers and a bent sense of humor known as the Thalidomide Kid.
    — Dwight Garner, New York Times, 28 Nov. 2022
  • This was once again made clear in the shambolic primary election that Georgia held on Tuesday.
    — Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker, 11 June 2020
  • But a shambolic 2-0 home defeat against Celta followed on the Sunday.
    — Mario Cortegana, New York Times, 15 Jan. 2026
  • And England had been desperately poor for long spells of the game, tense, panicked, shambolic in defence.
    — Jack Pitt-Brooke, New York Times, 1 July 2026
  • Its shambolic handling of the AstraZeneca vaccine has seen the country reverse course twice.
    — Yasmeen Serhan, The Atlantic, 18 Mar. 2021
  • That his was an almost farcical and shambolic attempt at an autogolpe does not change the gravity of what happened.
    — Jamelle Bouie, Mercury News, 8 Jan. 2026
  • All three played in the shambolic teenage noise-folk crew Moses Campbell, one of the better bands to emerge from the peak Smell era of the late-aughts.
    — August Brown, latimes.com, 7 Mar. 2018
  • Beirut’s traffic — a shambolic affair in the best of times — became even more chaotic, with motorists honking and shouting in a bid to reach the highway.
    — Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times, 5 Mar. 2026
  • Over seven seasons on NBC, Columbo put a charming, shambolic gloss on the crime show.
    — Seyward Darby, Longreads, 29 Aug. 2024
  • The record's filthiest cut even put the F-word in its title, living up to the name with a shambolic rave-up that both blew the roof off and shook the earth below the new decade.
    — Joe Lynch, Billboard, 13 Jan. 2021
  • That is the shambolic wonder of the Olympic Games, reinforcing our good, while ensuring the bad is never out of sight.
    — Amy Bass, CNN, 20 Feb. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'shambolic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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