butcher

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   to kill animals, usually for food consumption

   I butchered the elk after we returned from our hunting trip.

2. 2
   noun

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

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

3. 3
   noun

   A brutal or indiscriminate killer.

   Butcher of an innocent child.

4. 4
   verb

   To work as a butcher.

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

5. 5
   verb

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

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

6. 6
   verb

   To mess up hopelessly; to botch; to distort beyond recognition.

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

7. 7
   adj

   comparative form of butch: more butch

   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).

8. 8
   noun

   someone who makes mistakes because of incompetence

Etymology

From Middle English bocher, boucher, from Old French bouchier (“goat slaughterer”), from Old French bouc (“goat”), from Medieval Latin buccus (“he-goat”), from Frankish *bukk, from Proto-Germanic *bukkaz (“male goat, male deer”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuǵ- (“buck, ram”). See also English buck.