Library / English Dictionary

SLAUGHTER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

The killing of animals (as for food)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("slaughter" is a kind of...):

kill; killing; putting to death (the act of terminating a life)

Holonyms ("slaughter" is a part of...):

butchering; butchery (the business of a butcher)

Derivation:

slaughter (kill (animals) usually for food consumption)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The savage and excessive killing of many people

Synonyms:

butchery; carnage; mass murder; massacre; slaughter

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("slaughter" 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 "slaughter"):

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:

slaughter (kill a large number of people indiscriminately)

slaughterous (accompanied by bloodshed)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A sound defeat

Synonyms:

debacle; drubbing; slaughter; thrashing; trouncing; walloping; whipping

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Hypernyms ("slaughter" is a kind of...):

defeat; licking (an unsuccessful ending to a struggle or contest)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Kill a large number of people indiscriminately

Example:

The Hutus massacred the Tutsis in Rwanda

Synonyms:

massacre; mow down; slaughter

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "slaughter" is one way to...):

kill (cause to die; put to death, usually intentionally or knowingly)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Sentence example:

They want to slaughter the prisoners

Derivation:

slaughter (the savage and excessive killing of many people)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Kill (animals) usually for food consumption

Example:

They slaughtered their only goat to survive the winter

Synonyms:

butcher; slaughter

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Hypernyms (to "slaughter" is one way to...):

kill (cause to die; put to death, usually intentionally or knowingly)

"Slaughter" entails doing...:

cut (separate with or as if with an instrument)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "slaughter"):

chine (cut through the backbone of an animal)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

slaughter (the killing of animals (as for food))

slaughterer (a person who slaughters or dresses meat for market)

Credits

 Context examples: 

The patriarchal lives of my protectors caused these impressions to take a firm hold on my mind; perhaps, if my first introduction to humanity had been made by a young soldier, burning for glory and slaughter, I should have been imbued with different sensations.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

If the man who had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

A moment later he was inside the house, and the slaughter began.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

But it was “Boats over!” the boom-boom of guns, and the pitiful slaughter through the long day.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Alleyne gazed in admiration at the supple beauty of the creature; but the archer's fingers played with his quiver, and his eyes glistened with the fell instinct which urges a man to slaughter.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But the slaughter in the body of the poems was terrifying.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Challenger's eyes were shining with the lust of slaughter.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

See I read here what Jonathan have written:—That other of his race who, in a later age, again and again, brought his forces over The Great River into Turkey Land; who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomised life as a voracious appetite and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude of appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating and being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and disorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance, merciless, planless, endless.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

I drove the little herd (a dozen strong, now, what of the escapes she had permitted) a hundred yards farther on; and by the time she joined me I had finished the slaughter and was beginning to skin.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)