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
“My grandmother would take me for a walk, and we’d stop into the butcher and the international grocery,” See said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2026
Hard as it was for him to enjoy my company, it was harder for me not to enjoy his: He was still tough, straight, and blunt as a butcher.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
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
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
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
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
The site's characteristics align with several others in central Italy where butchered elephant remains appear alongside small stone tools and modified bones.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 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
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
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
Feeding and watering and shearing and lambing and even castrating and butchering, I do all these things.
From "The Knife of Never Letting Go" by Patrick Ness
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.
