Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A state of chaos or confusion; a muddle.
  • noun A quarrel or rumpus.
  • verb To scarper.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (Yiddish) a confused situation or affair; a mess

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Yiddish שלימזל (shlimazl, "misfortune"), from Hebrew שלא מזל (shellōmazzāl), של (shel, "from, of") + לא (lō, "not") + מזל (mazzāl, "luck")

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Examples

  • This effort produced what can only be described as a "shemozzle": horses, waggons, and men piled themselves up in a hopeless tangle at the bottom of the wadi, and the night operations came to an abrupt end.

    With Our Army in Palestine Antony Bluett

  • Mr Mulder said that because the system was such a "shemozzle", Kamco had no hope of detecting everyone who had been either ripped off or had benefited from the glitches.

    Latest News - Yahoo!7 News 2010

  • Lager has already stained his path, a thirst that is a matter of public record: during the nightclub shemozzle that reached the courts last year it emerged that Carroll had drunk "eight or nine pints of lager" at the time of the incident.

    England's Andy Carroll is not the first with a thirst for success | Barney Ronay 2011

  • Like any fan he has watched with dismay the ongoing boardroom shemozzle.

    Dietmar Hamann aims for the top again – with or without MK Dons Barney Ronay 2010

  • Bataille was a man who, in his novel Story of the Eye, had imagined scenes with bull testicles, pissing, the whole shemozzle.

    Paris, home of the avant-garde 2011

  • Even in these distant days of London 2012 it is starting to sound like just another sporting industry that doesn't know when to stop talking – as witnessed by this week's stage-managed shemozzle over which sporting celebrity will get to light the Olympic flame in Stratford.

    Torching the myth of Sir Steve Redgrave's Olympic supremacy | Barney Ronay 2011

  • As such there is a banality now to his presence with England, a quality that remains undimmed by choruses of player support and even by the resurfacing of the captaincy shemozzle – a wrestle for the armband that has been compared to a group of bald men fighting over a comb, although this does seem a little unfair on combs, which are useful things.

    Latest episode of mad men will resume after Fabio Capello interlude 2011

  • Some kind of player plus cash shemozzle involving Ji-Sung Park could be in the offing.

    Football transfer rumours: Liverpool's Fernando Torres to stay or go? 2010

  • But which in the current climate instead looks like a rather tedious formality backed up by a managerial-form-wobble-Ray-Wilkins-ousting shemozzle.

    Chelsea v MSK Zilina - as it happened Barney Ronay 2010

  • The shemozzle in the centre looked very messy, but with the alternate move system with the routs done in the other side's turn it just sorted itself out remarkably well.

    Minden 1759 Cromwell MkI 2009

Comments

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  • ""That excuse would do if this was an ordinary day," she replied. "But there's a bit of a shemozzle on, my children. As you may have heard.""

    Concluding by Henry Green, p 91 of the New Directions paperback

    May 7, 2018

  • Also schemozzle and shmozzle.

    March 28, 2021