butcher

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. One who slaughters and dresses animals for food or market.
2. n. One who sells meats.
3. n. One that kills brutally or indiscriminately.
4. n. A vendor, especially one on a train or in a theater.
5. n. One who bungles something.
6. v. To slaughter or prepare (animals) for market.
7. v. To kill brutally or indiscriminately.
8. v. To botch; bungle: butcher a project; butchered the language.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. One who slaughters animals for market; one whose occupation is the killing of animals for food.“
2. n. An executioner.
3. n. One who kills in a cruel or bloody manner; one guilty of indiscriminate slaughter.
4. n. Figuratively, an unskilful workman or performer; a bungler; a botch.
5. To kill or slaughter for food or for market.
6. To murder, especially in an unusually bloody or barbarous manner.
7. Figuratively, to treat bunglingly; make a botch of; spoil by bad work: as, to butcher a job; the play was butchered by the actors.
8. n. A long drink of beer.

Wiktionary

1. n. A person who prepares and sells meat (and sometimes also slaughters the animals).
2. n. by extension A brutal or indiscriminate killer.
3. n. Cockney rhyming slang A look.
4. n. informal, obsolete A person who sells candy, drinks, etc. in theatres, trains, circuses, etc.
5. v. transitive To slaughter animals and prepare meat for market.
6. v. transitive To kill brutally.
7. v. transitive To ruin something, often to the point of defamation.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. One who slaughters animals, or dresses their flesh for market; one whose occupation it is to kill animals for food.
2. n. A slaughterer; one who kills in large numbers, or with unusual cruelty; one who causes needless loss of life, as in battle.
3. v. To kill or slaughter (animals) for food, or for market.
4. v. To murder, or kill, especially in an unusually bloody or barbarous manner.
5. v. to bungle badly; to botch; -- used also when an object is damaged (literally or figuratively) in an activity.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. someone who makes mistakes because of incompetence
2. n. a retailer of meat
3. n. a person who slaughters or dresses meat for market
4. v. kill (animals) usually for food consumption
5. n. a brutal indiscriminate murderer