butcher Definition

butcher
noun

1. A person or shop that sells meat.
2. Someone whose job is slaughtering animals and preparing the carcasses for use as food.
3. A person who kills people needlessly and savagely, or takes pleasure in killing.

verb butchered, butchering

1. To kill and prepare (an animal) for sale as food.

Thesaurus: carve, clean, skin, bone, process, cut, dress, prepare, cure, smoke, salt.
2. To kill (especially a large number of people or animals) cruelly or indiscriminately.

Thesaurus: assassinate, destroy, exterminate, kill, mutilate, slay, slaughter, massacre.
3. colloq
To ruin or make a botch of something.
Example: The publisher butchered the preface I sent in
Thesaurus: ruin, spoil, wreck, botch, destroy.

Etymology: 13c as bocher or boucher, from French bochier or bouchier a person who kills and sells he-goats, from boc a he-goat.