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butcher

Pronunciation: /ˈbʊt͡ʃə/

The English word “butcher” has 10 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A person who prepares and sells meat (and sometimes also slaughters the animals).
  2. A brutal or indiscriminate killer.
  3. A look.
  4. A person who sells candy, drinks, etc. in theatres, trains, circuses, etc.
  5. A king playing card.

verb

  1. To slaughter (animals) and prepare (meat) for market.
  2. To work as a butcher.
  3. To kill brutally.
  4. To ruin (something), often to the point of defamation.
  5. To mess up hopelessly; to botch; to distort beyond recognition.

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.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.