slaughter

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (1)  · 
“
Even though the locus of the slaughter is the United States, the bastion of free 'market' democracy, yet, in many ways the current upheaval bears some similarities to the Asian crisis.

View all »
Definitions (19)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (5)

  1. noun The killing of animals especially for food.
  2. noun The killing of a large number of people; a massacre: "I could not give my name to aid the slaughter in this war, fought on both sides for grossly material ends” (Sylvia Pankhurst).
  3. transitive verb To kill (animals) especially for food; butcher.
2 more from this dictionary »

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (7)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (5)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • Woe to the Kureisch, for their slaughter is foretold But she was treated as of no account, a woman and frail, and the army set out upon its expedition in all the bravery of that pomp-loving nation. —  Mahomet
  • The order went forth from Mahomet to spare as much as possible his own house of Hashim, but otherwise the slaughter was as remorseless as the temper of the Muslim ensured. —  Mahomet
  • At the time, I was ripe for the slaughter--I was naive, searching for something meaningful to do with my life. —  Omni: April 1994
  • No one in Washington cares to say the obvious: That the slaughter is a symptom of a diseased social order.
  • It appears that the slaughter was an example of a phenomenon known as bird kill or tower kill, in which nocturnal birds that find their way by natural light become disoriented by artificial lighting and crash into illuminated structures. —  U.S. News
More examples »
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 105 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

massacre ·  destruction ·  bloodshed ·  carnage ·  cruelty ·  murder ·  torture ·  kill ·  persecution ·  violence ·  plunder ·  disaster

Used in the same contextWord Family

slaughter:   slaughtering ·  slaughtered ·  slaughters
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse slātr, butchery.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. from Middle English slaughter, slauhter, slautir, slawtyr, slaghter, from Anglo-Saxon as if *sleahtor (= Icelandic slātr, butchers' meat, = Norwegian dial. slaater, cattle for slaughter), with formative -tor (as in hleahtor, English laughter), from sleán (past participle slegen), strike, kill, slay: see slay. Cf. Icelandic slātr, butchers' meat. Cf. slaught.
  2. = Icelandic slātra = Norwegian slaatra, slaughter (cattle); from the noun.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/ˈslɔtər/
by American Heritage
Hear a sound »

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 a few times a week.

Recently looked up

celtic · iso · meat-packing · subsonic · Transmittal

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

ultimatum · pew · deadpool · sad panda · nom nom nom