BUTCHERY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does butchery mean? 

• BUTCHERY (noun)
  The noun BUTCHERY has 3 senses:

1. a building where animals are butchered

2. the business of a butcher

3. the savage and excessive killing of many people

  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)