slaughterhouse
Americannoun
noun
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.
When he arrived in Massachusetts for his first fellowship studying parathyroid hormone, Habener found a ready source of thyroid glands to study from a local Cambridge slaughterhouse that supplied calf meat.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 29, 2025
This approach would allow the federal government to impose effective regulations where the most serious food safety concerns originate: on the farm and in the slaughterhouse.
From Salon • Aug. 15, 2024
It said that livestock farmers, cheesemakers, slaughterhouse owners and feed suppliers had been informed about the new restrictions.
From BBC • Jul. 30, 2024
He said that since the discovery of H5N1 in dairy cattle, state and federal health officials have been closely monitoring farmworkers and slaughterhouse workers and urging farmers and farmworker organizations to “be alert, not alarmed.”
From Los Angeles Times • May 22, 2024
In fact, the rules assume that there will be bacteria in the meat, because in a giant slaughterhouse, there’s no way to avoid it.
From "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan
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.
