butcher
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Butcher
See also: Butcher
English
Pronunciation
- (UK, General Australian) IPA(key): /ˈbʊt͡ʃ.ə(ɹ)/
- (US, Canada) IPA(key): /ˈbʊt͡ʃ.ɚ/
Audio (California): (file)
- Rhymes: -ʊtʃə(ɹ)
Etymology 1
From Middle English bocher, boucher, from Old French bouchier (“goat slaughterer”), from Old French bouc (“goat”), from Medieval Latin buccus (“he-goat”), of Germanic origin. More at English buck.
Noun
butcher (plural butchers)
- A person who prepares and sells meat (and sometimes also slaughters the animals).
- 1900, Charles W. Chesnutt, chapter I, in 'The House Behind the Cedars:
- He looked in vain into the stalls for the butcher who had sold fresh meat twice a week, on market days...
- (figurative) A brutal or indiscriminate killer.
- c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :
- Butcher of an innocent child.
- (Cockney rhyming slang, from butcher's hook) A look.
- (informal, obsolete) A person who sells candy, drinks, etc. in theatres, trains, circuses, etc.
- (colloquial, archaic, card games) A king playing card.
- Coordinate term: bitch
Synonyms
Derived terms
- butcherbird
- butcher bird
- butcher block
- butcher blue
- butcher boy
- butcherdom
- butcherer
- butcheress
- butcher knife
- butcherless
- butcherlike
- butcherly
- butcherous
- butcher paper
- butcher's
- butcher's apron
- butcher's bill
- butcher's block
- butcher's broom
- butcher's hook
- butcher shop
- butchershop
- butcher's knife
- butcher's mourning
- butcher's paper
- butcher's steak
- butcher's stripes
- butcher stripes
- fit as a butcher's dog
- horse butcher
- news butcher
- outbutcher
- Piccadilly butcher
- pig butcher
- pork butcher
- slink butcher
Descendants
Translations
person who prepares and sells meat
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brutal or indiscriminate killer
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Verb
butcher (third-person singular simple present butchers, present participle butchering, simple past and past participle butchered)
- (transitive) To slaughter (animals) and prepare (meat) for market.
- (intransitive) To work as a butcher.
- 2008, Monte Dwyer, Red In The Centre: The Australian Bush Through Urban Eyes, Monyer Pty Ltd, page 121:
- He tells me he now earns three times as much as he did butchering.
- (transitive) To kill brutally.
- (transitive) To ruin (something), often to the point of defamation.
- Synonym: murder
- The band at that bar really butchered "Hotel California".
- (transitive) To mess up hopelessly; to botch; to distort beyond recognition.
- Synonyms: debase, bastardize
- I am bad at pronouncing names, so my apologies if I butcher any of your names.
Translations
slaughter animals and prepare meat for market
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kill brutally
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ruin something
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to mess up
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
References
- (king playing card): 1873, John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary
Etymology 2
Adjective
butcher
- comparative form of butch: more butch
- 2003, Alisa Solomon, Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theatre and Gender, page 170:
- Weaver and Shaw dance together and almost immediately another butch, an even butcher butch (Leslie Feinberg), cuts in to dance with Shaw (though Shaw would kill me if she heard me call someone a butcher butch).