A holocaust is destruction on a vast scale, especially by fire or slaughter. A nuclear holocaust, the horror of the holocaust, a holocaust of war.
Capitalised, the Holocaust means the Nazi murder of six million Jewish people and millions of others between 1941 and 1945, and it is used with that meaning alone. The lower-case general sense is now rare, because the capitalised one has taken the word over.
1nounholocaustDestruction on a vast scale.
“During the arms race, many people feared the world would end in a nuclear holocaust.”
holocaust is a destruction.
Greek holokauston means wholly burnt, from holos, whole, plus kaustos, burnt — first a burnt sacrificial offering.
Proto-Indo-European
*solh₂- — whole
Ancient Greek
ὁλόκαυστον
Latin
holocaustum
Old French
holocauste
Anglo-Norman
holocauste
Middle English
holocaust — burnt offering
English, today
holocaust
Built from
The noun is derived from Middle English holocaust (“burnt offering”)holocaustom, holocaustum, from Anglo-Norman holocauste, Old French holocauste, olocauste (modern French holocaust), from Latin holocaustum, from Ancient Greek ὁλόκαυστον, the neuter form of ὁλόκαυστος (“wholly burnt”), from ὅλος (“entire, whole”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European solh₂- (“whole”)) + καυστός (“burnt”) (from καίω (“to burn, burn up”); further etymology uncertain, possibly from Proto-Indo-European keh₂w-). by surface analysis, holo- + -caust. The verb is derived from the noun. As regards verb sense 3 (“to subject (a group of people) to a holocaust”), compare the use of genocide as a verb.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA