BUTCHER

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does butcher mean? 

• BUTCHER (noun)
  The noun BUTCHER has 4 senses:

1. a retailer of meat

2. a brutal indiscriminate murderer

3. a person who slaughters or dresses meat for market

4. someone who makes mistakes because of incompetence

  Familiarity information: BUTCHER used as a noun is uncommon.

• BUTCHER (verb)
  The verb BUTCHER has 1 sense:

1. kill (animals) usually for food consumption

  Familiarity information: BUTCHER used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BUTCHER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A retailer of meat

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

butcher; meatman

Hypernyms ("butcher" is a kind of...):

merchandiser; merchant (a businessperson engaged in retail trade)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "butcher"):

pork butcher (a vendor of pork and products made from pork)

Derivation:

butcher (kill (animals) usually for food consumption)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A brutal indiscriminate murderer

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("butcher" is a kind of...):

liquidator; manslayer; murderer (a criminal who commits homicide (who performs the unlawful premeditated killing of another human being))

Sense 3

Meaning:

A person who slaughters or dresses meat for market

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

butcher; slaughterer

Hypernyms ("butcher" is a kind of...):

skilled worker; skilled workman; trained worker (a worker who has acquired special skills)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "butcher"):

knacker (someone who buys up old horses for slaughter)

Derivation:

butcher (kill (animals) usually for food consumption)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Someone who makes mistakes because of incompetence

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

blunderer; botcher; bumbler; bungler; butcher; fuckup; fumbler; sad sack; stumbler

Hypernyms ("butcher" is a kind of...):

incompetent; incompetent person (someone who is not competent to take effective action)

Derivation:

butcherly (poorly done)

• BUTCHER (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they butcher    ... he / she / it butchers   
Past simple: butchered   
Past participle: butchered   
-ing form: butchering   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Kill (animals) usually for food consumption

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Synonyms:

butcher; slaughter

Context example:

They slaughtered their only goat to survive the winter

Hypernyms (to "butcher" is one way to...):

kill (cause to die; put to death, usually intentionally or knowingly)

"Butcher" entails doing...:

cut (separate with or as if with an instrument)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "butcher"):

chine (cut through the backbone of an animal)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody

Sentence example:

They want to butcher the prisoners

Derivation:

butcher (a person who slaughters or dresses meat for market)

butcher (a retailer of meat)

butchery (the savage and excessive killing of many people)

butchery (the business of a butcher)

butchery (a building where animals are butchered)

 Context examples 

If he can't get food he's bound to look for it, and mayhap he may chance to light on a butcher's shop in time.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I drove to the butcher’s and back.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He even carried them in his pockets, and reviewed them at odd moments on the street, or while waiting in butcher shop or grocery to be served.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

She was going to the butcher's, she told me, on purpose to order in some meat on Wednesday, and she has got three couple of ducks just fit to be killed.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

His deportment would have been fierce in a butcher or a brandy-merchant.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Luckily a butcher soon came by, driving a pig in a wheelbarrow.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

I can see his face now, with a flush over each craggy cheek-bone when the butcher made him the present of some ribs of beef.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Ah, the butcher has struck him!

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Then I should not have been as now, a mere fleeing sheep before this butcher.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

It is very inconvenient to have no butcher in the street.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)