English Dictionary

BUTCHERY

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IPA (US): 

 Dictionary entry overview: What does butchery mean? 

BUTCHERY (noun)
  The noun BUTCHERY has 3 senses:

1. a building where animals are butcheredplay

2. the business of a butcherplay

3. the savage and excessive killing of many peopleplay

  Familiarity information: BUTCHERY used as a noun is uncommon.


 Dictionary entry details 


BUTCHERY (noun)


Sense 1

Meaning:

A building where animals are butchered

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

abattoir; butchery; shambles; slaughterhouse

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

building; edifice (a structure that has a roof and walls and stands more or less permanently in one place)

Derivation:

butcher (kill (animals) usually for food consumption)


Sense 2

Meaning:

The business of a butcher

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

butchering; butchery

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

business; business enterprise; commercial enterprise (the activity of providing goods and services involving financial and commercial and industrial aspects)

Meronyms (parts of "butchery"):

slaughter (the killing of animals (as for food))

Derivation:

butcher (kill (animals) usually for food consumption)


Sense 3

Meaning:

The savage and excessive killing of many people

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

butchery; carnage; mass murder; massacre; slaughter

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

execution; murder; slaying (unlawful premeditated killing of a human being by a human being)

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

battue; bloodbath; bloodletting; bloodshed (indiscriminate slaughter)

Instance hyponyms:

Alamo (a siege and massacre at a mission in San Antonio in 1836; Mexican forces under Santa Anna besieged and massacred American rebels who were fighting to make Texas independent of Mexico)

Battle of Little Bighorn; Battle of the Little Bighorn; Custer's Last Stand; Little Bighorn (a battle in Montana near the Little Bighorn River between United States cavalry under Custer and several groups of Native Americans (1876); Custer was pursuing Sioux led by Sitting Bull; Custer underestimated the size of the Sioux forces (which were supported by Cheyenne warriors) and was killed along with all his command)

Derivation:

butcher (kill (animals) usually for food consumption)


 Context examples 


The iguanodon glade was the scene of a horrible butchery.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The researchers also studied traces of “manufacturing techniques” – changing styles of butchery and skull preparation – to help place the walrus remains in history.

(Over-hunting walruses contributed to the collapse of Norse Greenland, University of Cambridge)

Had I not seen the repose in the first place, and the gladness that stole over it just ere the final dissolution came, as realisation that the soul had been won, I could not have gone further with my butchery.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)



 Learn English with... Proverbs 
"This too, shall pass." (English proverb)

"Have not want not." (Lee Field Walstad)

"Good manners is the greatest friend." (Arabic proverb)

"You will get furthest with honesty." (Czech proverb)



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