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
-
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:
More than a century later, Cornell apparently still has bears turning up on campus — though university officials would now prefer students not butcher them in the dorm kitchen.
From Salon ● Aug. 8, 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
Dressed in jeans and fashionable sneakers, Burnham, who lives a few miles away, listened as Peter Cain, a local butcher, told him his Labour Party had become “a little bit complacent.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 23, 2026
This was Hassan and the physician, who would not even share a butcher between them.
From "Everything Sad Is Untrue" by Daniel Nayeri
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
But he thinks higher supermarket prices might be tempting shoppers into a trip to the butchers.
From BBC ● Dec. 18, 2025
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
The butchers identified with one another as a brotherhood.
From "A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919" by Claire Hartfield
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
There's brilliance but there's also painful weakness - soft beginnings to Tests, panic when well on top, overplaying, error counts, poor discipline adding pressure, players going off script, chances butchered, lack of mental resilience.
From BBC ● Feb. 3, 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 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
While we scurried to finish the house, and the cook butchered the turtles and plucked the pheasants, the hairdresser arrived to tend to Madam.
From "Chains" by Laurie Halse Anderson
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
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
A host is also responsible for introducing every comic onstage, mentioning their credits and not butchering their name — all while hoping they actually make it on time for their spot.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 29, 2025
The fleecing of Kevin, who ProPublica agreed to identify by first name only, was a textbook example of pig butchering.
From Salon ● Jun. 26, 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.
