butchery

English

Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

From Middle English bocherie, from Old French. See butcher for more.

Noun

butchery (countable and uncountable, plural butcheries)

1. The cruel, ruthless killings of humans, as at a slaughterhouse.
   • c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii]:

     The tyrannous and bloody act is done,—
     The most arch deed of piteous massacre
     That ever yet this land was guilty of.
     Dighton and Forrest, who I did suborn
     To do this piece of ruthless butchery

2. (rare) An abattoir, a slaughterhouse.
   • 1899 On the third Friday Jimmie was dropped at the door of the school from the doctor's buggy. The other children, notably those who had already passed over the mountain of distress, looked at him with glee, seeing in him another lamb brought to butchery. — Stephen Crane, Making an Orator.
   • 1901 There was good grass on the selection all the year. I’d picked up a small lot—about twenty head—of half-starved steers for next to nothing, and turned them on the run; they came on wonderfully, and my brother-in-law (Mary’s sister’s husband), who was running a butchery at Gulgong, gave me a good price for them. — Henry Lawson, A Double Buggy at Lahey Creek.
3. The butchering of meat.
   • 1922, James Frazer, “Chapter 52”, in The Golden Bough:

     This butchery begins in the first Japanese month. For this purpose they put the animal's head between two long poles, which are squeezed together by fifty or sixty people, both men and women. When the bear is dead they eat his flesh, keep the liver as a medicine

4. A disastrous effort, an atrocious failure.

   This week’s impossible-to-pronounce word: Catania. Granted, it’s a little trickier than Palermo, but there was no excusing the verbal butchery that ensued. —blog.

5. A meat market

Translations

cruel, ruthless killing of humans

• Afrikaans: bloedbad, slagting
• Finnish: teurastus (fi)
• Italian: massacro (it) m, carneficina (it) f
• Latin: trucīdātiō f, strāgēs f

abattoir — see abattoir

butchering of meat

• Afrikaans: slagting
• Finnish: teurastus (fi)
• Irish: búistéireacht f, feolaireacht f

disastrous effort

• Finnish: teurastus (fi)

Etymology 2

From butch +‎ -ery.

Noun

butchery (countable and uncountable, plural butcheries)

1. (slang) The stereotypical behaviors and accoutrements of being a butch lesbian.