butchery

plural butcheries

1. countableuncountableThe butchering of meat.

   (coordinate in precise usage referring to animal carcasses)

   1 more example

   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

   1922, James Frazer, “Chapter 52”, in The Golden Bough

2. countableuncountableA butcher's shop; a meat market.

   Synonyms: butcher shop, butcher's

3. countableuncountableThe cruel, ruthless killings of humans, as if at a slaughterhouse.

   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

   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]

   Synonyms: slaughter, slaughtering

4. countablerareuncountableAn abattoir.

   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.

   1 more example

   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.

   Synonyms: slaughterhouse, slaughtery

5. countableuncountableA disastrous effort, an atrocious failure.

   I often wondered how Walcott the director could stand listening to some of his marvelous words and phrases being subjected to verbal butchery as sometimes occurred when a player did not understand what he was speaking or reading.

   1993, Robert D. Hamner, Critical Perspectives on Derek Walcott, page 275

   1. countableuncountableSurgery that was botched or is asserted by the speaker to have been so.

plural butcheries

1. countableslanguncountableThe stereotypical behaviors and accoutrements of a butch lesbian.