Other forms: slaughters
Slaughter is the killing of animals for meat, or of many people. An abattoir slaughter, the slaughter of civilians, lambs to the slaughter.
The animal sense is technical and regulated: stunning before killing is required by law in Britain, with exemptions for some religious slaughter. Used of people it means mass killing and is deliberately blunt. In sport, to slaughter a team is to beat it heavily.
1nounslaughterThe killing of animals for meat.
“The farmer sent the pigs to slaughter at the end of the summer.”
2nounkillingThe killing of many people.
“The general was later tried for the slaughter of unarmed villagers.”
slaughter is a killing.
From Old Norse slahtr, from a Germanic root meaning to strike. Slay is the same root, and the -ter ending is like that in laughter.
Proto-Germanic
*slahtrą
Old Norse
*slahtr
Middle English
slaughter
English, today
slaughter
From Middle English slaughter, from Old Norse slahtr, later sláttr, from Proto-Germanic slahtrą, from Proto-Germanic slahaną. Equivalent to slay + -ter (as in laughter). Eventually derived from Proto-Indo-European slak- (“to hit, strike, throw”). Related with Dutch slachten, German schlachten, Finnish lahdata (all “to slaughter”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA