abattoir

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (12)  · 
They wanted some cattle slaughterers for the abattoir, and he's enlisted himself in there for protection, although he's got a University degree and in spite of being an attorney's clerk.

View all »
Definitions (5)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun A slaughterhouse.
  2. noun Something likened to a slaughterhouse: "The hand of God and mankind's self-inflicted blows seem equally heavy ... giving a strong cumulative impression of the world as an abattoir” (Manchester Guardian Weekly).

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (1)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (1)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • If you'd been in a modern abattoir, you'd know the cattle aren't frightened. —  Magazine - Fantasy and Science Fiction - [Vol 112] - Issue 04 - April 2007 (v1.0) [html]
  • She started taking Bold with her on her morning trips to the abattoir, located right in the heart of the old city. —  THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT - Kim Stanley Robinson
  • ;Still playing the baby duck, even when the mommy ducks are heading for the abattoir. —  JEFF GRUBB
  • Grant had been bludgeoned to death with one of his own hideous creations The phrase seemed eerily apt here in this workshop-turned-abattoir, where Grant had fashioned his sick fetishes from animal and bird corpses and where, in turn, someone had fashioned his death And then I remembered another phrase from the quatrain: nets to catch the wind. —  Muller, Marcia - [11] Trophies and Dead Things.htm
  • He got no further than his opening gambit: the sincerest of apologies that would make way for certain reconciliation and a possible promise on the night-bus home, when she handed him a whisky and told him that she had a new bloke, a bloke called Frankie who came from Slaemuir and worked in an abattoir or something as rank. —  BlackStaticHorrorMagazine#3
 

Tags

abattoir hasn't been tagged yet.

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 110 times.

On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. French, from abattre, to strike down, from Old French; see abate.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. French, from abatt-re, knock down, slaughter, + -oir (from L. -ōrium), indicating place.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »

/æbætˈwɑr/
by American Heritage

Charts

frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about twice a year.

Recently looked up

exclaiming · gallows-bird · CSW · excitment · excitable

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

qualms · poofter · oh for heaven's sake · embodies · silence