slaughter
noun · verb
Simple meaning
The killing of animals.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
slawterSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈslɔtɚ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The killing of animals (as for food)
A massacre; the killing of a large number of people.
A rout or decisive defeat.
A sound defeat
verb
transitive
To butcher animals, generally for food.
Kill a large number of people indiscriminately
transitiveintransitive
To massacre people in large numbers.
transitive
To kill someone or something, especially in a particularly brutal manner.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The killing of animals (as for food)
Used this way, slaughter is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- thrashing , a specialist term, precise but narrower
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use slaughter
- “They slaughtered their only goat to survive the winter.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.