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
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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
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is butcheringprogressive
-
have been butcheringperfect progressive
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has been butcheringperfect progressive
Past
-
butcheredsimple
-
had butcheredperfect
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was butcheringprogressive
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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
The 87-year-old former butcher has made new friends through the group.
From BBC ● Aug. 22, 2026
A meat board carries half a butcher shop in sausage form.
From Salon ● Aug. 11, 2026
I’d ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window.
From "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris
According to its website, Johnsons of Old Hurst is a farming business that now features a butchers, a farm shop, tea room, steakhouse and zoo.
From BBC ● Jun. 19, 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
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
I picked my way through the dwindling crowd, the lame beggars dressed in layers of tattered rags, the vendors with rugs on their shoulders, the cloth merchants and butchers closing shop for the day.
From "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini
Add to the fact that they butchered a clutch of chances in last year's loss at Twickenham and there is plenty to put right for France.
From BBC ● Mar. 14, 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
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
We butchered two or three Saturdays after that.
From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck
Under updated housing rules, students are prohibited from “skinning, butchering, or otherwise processing wild game animals” inside residential buildings.
From Salon ● Aug. 8, 2026
Lingjing appears to have been a butchering site where Homo juluensis processed animals such as deer.
From Science Daily ● May 9, 2026
He then breaks into song, trying his hand at the chant and butchering the delivery.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 27, 2026
One term for the scams is pig butchering, because the scammers “fatten up” their targets by entangling them in romantic relationships online and dangling bogus financial schemes, then “butcher” them by disappearing with their money.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 14, 2025
A group is butchering Journey, which is what you should expect during karaoke—awkward singing.
From "What If It's Us" by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera
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.
