slaughterhouse
Americannoun
-
slaughterhouses
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of slaughterhouse
Explanation
A slaughterhouse is where animals are killed so they can be used for meat. Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle exposes the unsafe working conditions of a slaughterhouse in Chicago. Good times. Not. In order for people to eat meat, animals have to be slaughtered, or killed, and the place where this happens on a large scale is a slaughterhouse. Sometimes it's also called an abattoir. The word stems from a Scandinavian root and is related to the Old Norseslatr, "a butchering." The word slaughterhouse can also refer to a violent situation. In Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse Five," war prisoners are housed in an abandoned slaughterhouse, which is also a metaphor for war itself.
Vocabulary lists containing slaughterhouse
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Perhaps we really do live in a “demented slaughterhouse of a world,” as the unhinged newsman Howard Beale says in one of his apocalyptic broadcasts, and have all along.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 29, 2026
They’re not selling it and sending it to a slaughterhouse.
From Slate ● Jun. 11, 2026
Realizing that they’re headed to the slaughterhouse, the animals rebel against the humans, save themselves, and reinhabit the farm, establishing their own system of checks and balances to ensure their survival.
From Salon ● May 3, 2026
He's written about slaughterhouse workers, the family behind Tyson Foods, the value of a 7-Eleven Slurpee, and the failed supermarket megamerger between Kroger and Albertsons.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 8, 2026
But cuneiform was found in museums, displayed in glass cases and preserved as something precious, not scratched into a steel slaughterhouse.
From "City of the Plague God" by Sarwat Chadda
The administration’s aim is to provide a financial safety net for smaller slaughterhouses at a time when meat processors are losing an estimated $300 per head of cattle.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
"In addition to setting up that 20 kilometre zone, we've increased the amount of testing in the slaughterhouses," Muir said.
From BBC ● Dec. 1, 2025
The pair later found employment in slaughterhouses in Nebraska, where she suffered a severe leg injury from a cutting blade.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2025
The link between disdain and action may not form, in the same way that people who don’t like slaughterhouses still eat steak.
From Slate ● Mar. 4, 2025
They were neither mammoth slaughterhouses nor places to shelter from rain or hide from lions.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
