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Massacre   /mˈæsəkər/   Listen
noun
Massacre  n.  
1.
The killing of a considerable number of human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty, or contrary to the usages of civilized people; as, the massacre on St. Bartholomew's Day; the St. Valentine's Day massacre; the Amritsar massacre; the Wounded Knee massacre.
2.
Murder. (Obs.)
Synonyms: Massacre, Butchery, Carnage. Massacre denotes the promiscuous slaughter of many who can not make resistance, or much resistance. Butchery refers to cold-blooded cruelty in the killing of men as if they were brute beasts. Carnage points to slaughter as producing the heaped-up bodies of the slain. "I'll find a day to massacre them all, And raze their faction and their family." "If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds, Brhold this pattern of thy butcheries." "Such a scent I draw Of carnage, prey innumerable!"



verb
Massacre  v. t.  (past & past part. massacred; pres. part. massacring)  To kill in considerable numbers where much resistance can not be made; to kill with indiscriminate violence, without necessity, and contrary to the usages of nations; to butcher; to slaughter; limited to the killing of human beings. "If James should be pleased to massacre them all, as Maximian had massacred the Theban legion."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Massacre" Quotes from Famous Books



... strange noises, looked forth from a window; then screamed, and dashed for the pastor's study. Mr. Malloch Smith, that grim-bearded Methodist, came to the front yard and found his visiting nephew being rapidly prepared by Master Minafer to serve as a principal figure in a pageant of massacre. It was with great physical difficulty that Mr. Smith managed to give his nephew a chance to escape into the house, for Georgie was hard and quick, and, in such matters, remarkably intense; but the minister, after a grotesque tussle, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... shot!' And all these soldiers who were falling from utter prostration, only holding themselves on their feet by leaning on their guns, felt all of a sudden that thrill of furious and bestial anger which urges on a mob to massacre. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... their children are strangled, Creon kills Eurydice, Adrastus kills Creon, and the insurgents kill Adrastus; when we add to this, that the conspirators are hanged, the reader will perceive, that the play, which began with a pestilence, concludes with a massacre, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... that—in May, the prime minister should have said that the government was waiting to have reasonable proof that Gordon was in danger? By that time Khartum was surrounded, and the governor of Berber had announced that his case was desperate, which was too surely proved by the massacre which ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... will be observed, here call all or any of the faithful to a general massacre of their Catholic fellow-subjects. He went to that length later, as we shall show. In an epistle of 1554 he only writes: "Some shall demand, 'What then, shall we go and slay all idolaters?' That were the office, dear brethren, of every civil ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang


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