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.
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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
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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:
Ratko Mladic, the so-called "butcher of Bosnia" who has reportedly died at the age of either 83 or 84, had insisted he was chosen by "fate" to defend the Serb people from a Western onslaught.
From Barron's ● Aug. 27, 2026
As orders flood into the restaurant via online food delivery services and a walk-up window, a butcher slices through whole chickens while one cook flips thin slabs of steak and chicken on a grill.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 22, 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
Naano and Nana Abu came over a little while ago to bring us some fresh kabobs they made with the meat from the butcher shop.
From "Zara’s Rules for Record-Breaking Fun" by Hena Khan
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
Leicestershire County Council announced the £131m road would be named in honour of the meaty treat, a speciality of the town's butchers, at a ceremony on Thursday.
From BBC ● May 14, 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
He remembers about six butchers being in competition in Saltcoats at that stage.
From BBC ● Feb. 28, 2026
Just one of the half-knowledgeable butchers who plied their trade among the desperate of the Barrel.
From "Six of Crows" by Leigh Bardugo
The chicken is brought in whole before being butchered and brined in-house.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 22, 2026
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
"I was so lucky, in the second-to-last frame I tried a plant and butchered it and fluked a ball. It was fate maybe," Higgins told BBC Sport.
From BBC ● Jan. 15, 2026
The 1987 movie features Schwarzenegger’s Dutch leading a multiracial band of bros on a black ops mission to eliminate guerrillas in a Central American jungle, only to be butchered by an invisible stalker from space.
From Salon ● Nov. 12, 2025
He butchered it and laid its best parts for me on the middle bench.
From "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
Cornell University has clarified that its dorm kitchens are for cooking food — not butchering bears.
From Salon ● Aug. 8, 2026
Early humans often used bone implements to sharpen the cutting edges of handaxes and tools used for butchering animals.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 27, 2026
Lots of folks are going to blame USC and coach Lincoln Riley for butchering a Knute Rockne-born tradition that accounted for 78 straight games, not counting 2020, the COVID-19 year.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 22, 2025
We’ve come a long way from 1992, when Bill Clinton bypassed prime-time and Sunday political shows by wearing sunglasses and butchering “Heartbreak Hotel” on a saxophone on “The Arsenio Hall Show.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 16, 2025
Well, to lose the only meat we had left from last winter’s hog butchering was bad enough.
From "Old Yeller" by Fred Gipson
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.
