slaughterhouse
Americannoun
-
slaughterhouses
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of slaughterhouse
Explanation
A slaughterhouse is where animals are killed so they can be used for meat. Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle exposes the unsafe working conditions of a slaughterhouse in Chicago. Good times. Not. In order for people to eat meat, animals have to be slaughtered, or killed, and the place where this happens on a large scale is a slaughterhouse. Sometimes it's also called an abattoir. The word stems from a Scandinavian root and is related to the Old Norseslatr, "a butchering." The word slaughterhouse can also refer to a violent situation. In Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse Five," war prisoners are housed in an abandoned slaughterhouse, which is also a metaphor for war itself.
Vocabulary lists containing slaughterhouse
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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:
They’re not selling it and sending it to a slaughterhouse.
From Slate ● Jun. 11, 2026
Realizing that they’re headed to the slaughterhouse, the animals rebel against the humans, save themselves, and reinhabit the farm, establishing their own system of checks and balances to ensure their survival.
From Salon ● May 3, 2026
He's written about slaughterhouse workers, the family behind Tyson Foods, the value of a 7-Eleven Slurpee, and the failed supermarket megamerger between Kroger and Albertsons.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 8, 2026
It said that livestock farmers, cheesemakers, slaughterhouse owners and feed suppliers had been informed about the new restrictions.
From BBC ● Jul. 30, 2024
The Americans and their guards and Campbell took shelter in an echoing meat locker which was hollowed in living rock under the slaughterhouse.
From "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut
There is also evidence that, almost simultaneously, another arm of the federal government was allowing inexpensive wild horses to enter a chain that could end at foreign slaughterhouses.
From Salon ● Aug. 27, 2026
They are sold to feedlots that fatten them up before being shipped to slaughterhouses.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 20, 2026
"In addition to setting up that 20 kilometre zone, we've increased the amount of testing in the slaughterhouses," Muir said.
From BBC ● Dec. 1, 2025
The pair later found employment in slaughterhouses in Nebraska, where she suffered a severe leg injury from a cutting blade.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2025
The third time, the flames had reduced it to a charred carcass amid the smoke-guttering factories and slaughterhouses of the Stockyards.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
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.
