butch·er·y

(bo͝och′ə-rē)

n. pl. butch·er·ies

1. Wanton or cruel killing; carnage.

2. Something botched; a bungle.

3. The trade of a butcher.

4. Chiefly British A slaughterhouse.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

butchery

(ˈbʊtʃərɪ)

n, pl -eries

1. the business or work of a butcher

2. wanton and indiscriminate slaughter; carnage

3. (Agriculture) a less common word for slaughterhouse

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

butch•er•y

(ˈbʊtʃ ə ri)

n., pl. -er•ies.

1. brutal or wanton slaughter of animals or humans.

2. the trade of a butcher.

3. Brit. a slaughterhouse.

4. the act of bungling or botching.

[1300–50; Middle English < Anglo-French, Middle French]

Butchery

butchers collectively, 1475.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun	1.	butchery - a building where animals are butchered abattoir, slaughterhouse, shambles building, edifice - a structure that has a roof and walls and stands more or less permanently in one place; "there was a three-story building on the corner"; "it was an imposing edifice"
	2.	butchery - the business of a butcher butchering slaughter - the killing of animals (as for food) business enterprise, commercial enterprise, business - the activity of providing goods and services involving financial and commercial and industrial aspects; "computers are now widely used in business"
	3.	butchery - the savage and excessive killing of many people carnage, mass murder, massacre, slaughter murder, slaying, execution - unlawful premeditated killing of a human being by a human being bloodbath, bloodletting, bloodshed, battue - indiscriminate slaughter; "a bloodbath took place when the leaders of the plot surrendered"; "ten days after the bloodletting Hitler gave the action its name"; "the valley is no stranger to bloodshed and murder"; "a huge prison battue was ordered"

butchery

noun

1. slaughter, killing, murder, massacre, bloodshed, carnage, mass murder, blood-letting, blood bath War is simply a legalised form of butchery.

2. carving, cutting up, dressing, cleaning, jointing a carcass hung up for butchery

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

butchery

noun

The savage killing of many victims:

bloodbath, bloodletting, bloodshed, carnage, massacre, pogrom, slaughter.

Translations

butchery

[ˈbʊtʃərɪ] N (lit) → carnicería f (fig) → matanza f, carnicería f

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

butchery

[ˈbʊtʃəri] n

(= slaughter) [people] → boucherie f

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

butchery

n (= slaughter) → Gemetzel nt, → Metzelei f; the butchery of millions → das Abschlachten or Niedermetzeln von Millionen; stop the fight, this is butchery! → brechen Sie den Kampf ab, das ist ja das reinste Gemetzel!

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

butchery

[ˈbʊtʃərɪ] n

a. (massacre) → massacro

b. (work of a butcher) → macellazione f, macelleria

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

I would never dream of directing you to organise a mere butchery, even if I expected the best results from it.

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With an inconsistency as monstrous as anything in this awful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and tended the wounded man with the gentlest solicitude-- had made a litter for him and escorted him carefully from the spot-- had then caught up their weapons and plunged anew into a butchery so dreadful, that the Doctor had covered his eyes with his hands, and swooned away in the midst of it.

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It was great blasphemy, when the devil said, I will ascend, and be like the highest; but it is greater blasphemy, to personate God, and bring him in saying, I will descend, and be like the prince of darkness; and what is it better, to make the cause of religion to descend, to the cruel and execrable actions of murthering princes, butchery of people, and subversion of states and governments?

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"Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have drawn your attention - that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as this - let us glance at the butchery itself.

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this," cried the voice, the tone of which was at once polished and jeering, "this is nothing but a butchery of horses and not a combat between men.

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Some of the Astorians supposed it an act of butchery by a roving band of Blackfeet; others, however, and with greater probability of correctness, have ascribed it to the tribe of Pierced-nose Indians, in revenge for the death of their comrade hanged by order of Mr.

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For this decline political confusion is the chief cause; first, in the renewal of the Hundred Years' War, with its sordid effort to deprive another nation of its liberty, and then in the brutal and meaningless War of the Roses, a mere cut-throat civil butchery of rival factions with no real principle at stake.

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The iguanodon glade was the scene of a horrible butchery. From the pools of blood and the enormous lumps of flesh scattered in every direction over the green sward we imagined at first that a number of animals had been killed, but on examining the remains more closely we discovered that all this carnage came from one of these unwieldy monsters, which had been literally torn to pieces by some creature not larger, perhaps, but far more ferocious, than itself.

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There they look upon jetan as a martial sport--here it is but butchery. And U-Thor is opposed to the ancient slave raids and to the policy that keeps Manator forever isolated from the other nations of Barsoom; but U-Thor is not jeddak and so there is no change."

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He has turned what was clean, common-sense butchery among his fellow-barbarians into a very modern and scientific secret society of assassins.

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"That is butchery," said I; "but this--ah, this is an art.

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The Belgians in vain interposed to prevent the butchery of the English.

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