Massacres

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The acts of indiscriminately killing a large number of individuals, often in a brutal and systematic manner
2. Events where a significant loss of life occurs, typically involving violence against civilians or unarmed populations
3. Instances in which a group is violently and extensively slaughtered, reflecting a tragic severity in the violence inflicted

Etymology: The plural "massacres" simply pairs the noun with its ordinary "-s" ending, so the history belongs to the singular "massacre." That noun reached English around 1580, borrowed from Middle French "massacre," which in turn came from Old French forms such as "macecre" and "macecle," meaning slaughterhouse or butchery. The Old French noun is usually thought to have been formed from a verb meaning "to slaughter," though the noun may be attested slightly earlier than the verb. The word's deepest origin is actually disputed. One proposal links it to Latin "macellum," a butcher's shop. Another traces it to a Vulgar Latin verb built on a word for a club, the mace-like weapon. A third suggests a Middle Low German verb meaning "to cut" or "hew," which is distantly related to German "metzeln," still used for slaughter. A useful parallel comes from Arabic. "Majzara" once meant simply a spot where animals were butchered, and it later took on the sense of mass killing, showing how a word for a slaughterhouse can grow into a word for atrocity.

Synonyms: slaughters, butcheries