Carnage comes from French carnage, from Italian carnaggio ('slaughter'), from Medieval Latin carnāticum, from Latin carō ('flesh, meat'). The historical trail runs through carnāticum in Latin and carō in Latin. Used as a noun, carnage now means "the slaughter of a great number of people", so the present definition can be read against the older forms and meanings. The same lexical family is also visible in related forms such as carnal, carnality, carnivore, and incarnate. The result is a borrowed or transmitted form whose modern spelling carries a compact record of its route into English.