butcher

He looked in vain into the stalls for the butcher who had sold fresh meat twice a week, on market days...

1900, Charles W. Chesnutt, chapter I, in 'The House Behind the Cedars:

A person who prepares and sells meat (and sometimes also slaughters the animals).

Butcher of an innocent child.

c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]:

(figurative) A brutal or indiscriminate killer.

Cockney rhyming slang
Cockney rhyming slang

(Cockney rhyming slang, from butcher's hook) A look.

(informal, obsolete) A person who sells candy, drinks, etc. in theatres, trains, circuses, etc.

Coordinate term: bitch

(colloquial, archaic, card games) A king playing card.

→ Hindi: बूचड़ (būcaṛ)

→ Swahili: bucha

→ Urdu: بُوچَڑ (būcaṛ)

From Middle English bocher, boucher, from Old French bouchier (“goat slaughterer”), from Old French bouc (“goat”), from Medieval Latin buccus (“he-goat”), of Germanic origin. More at English buck.


butcher

(transitive) To slaughter (animals) and prepare (meat) for market.

He tells me he now earns three times as much as he did butchering.

2008, Monte Dwyer, Red In The Centre: The Australian Bush Through Urban Eyes, Monyer Pty Ltd, page 121:

The band at that bar really butchered "Hotel California".

(transitive) To ruin (something), often to the point of defamation.

I am bad at pronouncing names, so my apologies if I butcher any of your names.

(transitive) To mess up hopelessly; to botch; to distort beyond recognition.

en-verb

butcher (third-person singular simple present butchers, present participle butchering, simple past and past participle butchered)

butchers (present singular third-person)
butchering (participle present)
butchered (participle past)
butchered (past)

جَزَر

slaughter animals and prepare meat for market


butcher

Weaver and Shaw dance together and almost immediately another butch, an even butcher butch (Leslie Feinberg), cuts in to dance with Shaw (though Shaw would kill me if she heard me call someone a butcher butch).

2003, Alisa Solomon, Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theatre and Gender, page 170: