Carnage is the killing of very many people. Terrible carnage, scenes of carnage, the carnage of war.
It names slaughter on a scale, and it is used in reporting battles, disasters and crashes. Used loosely it describes any scene of destruction, and in British informal speech it is applied comically to a messy room or a chaotic evening — which some people object to and most people do anyway. Note that carnage comes from the Latin for flesh, like carnivore and carnal.
1nouncarnageThe killing of very many people.
“The battle ended in carnage, with thousands dead on both sides.”
2nounsceneAny scene of destruction, in informal use.
“After the children's party, the living room was carnage.”
carnage is mass killing.
Middle French carnage comes from Latin caro, flesh, through a Vulgar Latin word for the slaughter of animals. Carnal, carnivore and carnival come from the same flesh.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)ker-
Vulgar Latin
*carnaticum — slaughter of animals
Middle French
carnage
English, today
carnage
Built from
Borrowed from Middle French carnage, from a Norman or Picard variant fro-nor -) of Old French charnage, from char (“flesh”), or from Vulgar Latin carnaticum (“slaughter of animals”), itself from Latin carnem, accusative of caro (“flesh”). by surface analysis, carn- + -age.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA