butcher
Americannoun
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butchers
plural
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a retail or wholesale dealer in meat.
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a person who slaughters certain animals, or who dresses the flesh of animals, fish, or poultry, for food or market.
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a person guilty of brutal or indiscriminate slaughter or murder.
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a vendor who hawks newspapers, candy, beverages, etc., as on a train, at a stadium, etc.
verb (used with object)
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butchers,
present (3rd person singular)
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butchered,
past participle, past
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butchering
present participle
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to slaughter or dress (animals, fish, or poultry) for market.
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to kill indiscriminately or brutally.
-
to bungle; botch.
to butcher a job.
noun
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a retailer of meat
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a person who slaughters or dresses meat for market
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an indiscriminate or brutal murderer
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a person who destroys, ruins, or bungles something
verb
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to slaughter or dress (animals) for meat
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to kill indiscriminately or brutally
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to make a mess of; botch; ruin
Synonym Usage
See slaughter.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
butchersimple
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butcherssimple
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have butcheredperfect
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has butcheredperfect
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am butcheringprogressive
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are butcheringprogressive
-
is butcheringprogressive
-
have been butcheringperfect progressive
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has been butcheringperfect progressive
Past
-
butcheredsimple
-
had butcheredperfect
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was butcheringprogressive
-
were butcheringprogressive
-
had been butcheringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of butcher
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English bocher, from Anglo-French; Old French bo(u)chier, equivalent to bo(u)c “he-goat” (from unattested Gaulish bucco-; compare Old Irish boc, Welsh bwch; akin to buck 1 ) + -ier -ier 2 ( see -er 2)
Explanation
The person whose job it is to cut up and sell meat is called a butcher. Your grandmother might go to the butcher once a week to buy pork chops. A butcher is an expert at preparing cuts of meat and poultry in a butcher shop or the meat section of a supermarket. You can also call a person whose job is slaughtering farm animals a butcher. Because this is a fairly bloody, gory occupation, the word is also used to mean a cruel, ruthless murderer. And when you really mess something up, you can also be said to butcher it — like the way you butchered that poem when you tried to recite it from memory.
Vocabulary lists containing butcher
Name That Job: Occupational Last Names
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"Zlateh the Goat"
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Selection Vocabulary 1, Unit 6
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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:
Just when you think you’ve made it through, the exhibition has one last gruesome touch: To escape, you have to push your way through a set of bloody butcher curtains.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026
A meat board carries half a butcher shop in sausage form.
From Salon ● Aug. 11, 2026
With nothing more than a smartphone, a lighting kit and a fridge full of fresh meat, halal butcher Manny Malik from Wolverhampton had around two hundred people tuning into his session.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026
"Store closed", reads the sign next to Alina's butcher shop.
From Barron's ● Jun. 30, 2026
They were both hideous waxy ghosts on butcher paper.
From "Wintergirls" by Laurie Halse Anderson
The volunteers “were butchers, bakers, candlestick makers who then fought fire when the fire bell rang,” Mr. Winkle says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 3, 2026
The government decided not to back a previous proposal for more businesses including butchers and fishmongers to open on the public holiday.
From Barron's ● May 1, 2026
Illegal skin lightening products are being sold in butchers and specialist food shops across the UK as well as online, a watchdog has warned.
From BBC ● Feb. 17, 2026
Manchester Farms Quail – Quail can be surprisingly tough to track down, even at specialty butchers, but Manchester Farms makes this delicious little bird totally accessible for home cooks.
From Salon ● Dec. 4, 2025
Chaos—candy butchers vaulting over counters, workmen staggering out from under tent flaps, roustabouts racing headlong across the lot.
From "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen
Busy markets sold butchered meats and fast-wilting vegetables, horse carts clattered, children shouted, and men and women gossiped in coffeehouses and read from printed newspapers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 6, 2026
In 2024, Shasta County agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a 9-year-old girl and her family after sheriff’s deputies seized her goat so it could be butchered.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 11, 2025
The camera holds on a tight shot of a tomato being butchered by a dull kitchen knife, juice and seeds spilling out as the fruit splits down its sides.
From Salon ● Mar. 2, 2025
But France had butchered numerous try-scoring opportunities in a surprise defeat by England at Allianz Stadium last time out, and looked intent on making amends.
From BBC ● Feb. 23, 2025
Sometimes Shorty wound up practically butchered, not from her long powder-pink fingernails, but from all that hardware.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
Under updated housing rules, students are prohibited from “skinning, butchering, or otherwise processing wild game animals” inside residential buildings.
From Salon ● Aug. 8, 2026
The site also contained stone tools along with the remains of elephants and other animals, suggesting the area was once used for butchering prey near the edge of an ancient lake.
From Science Daily ● May 24, 2026
He then breaks into song, trying his hand at the chant and butchering the delivery.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 27, 2026
The best of them, such as “Goodbye, It’s Over,” about the butchering of a pig, rail against the cheapness of life.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 26, 2026
Then I got the butchering knives out and we went together into the snow field and cut up the cow.
From "My Brother Sam is Dead" by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
Definitions 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.
