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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



... of which it had some real knowledge. But imagination with microscopes, working on a terrifying spectacle of millions of grotesque creatures of whose nature it had no knowledge, became a cruel, terror-stricken, persecuting delirium. Are you aware, madam, that a general massacre of men of science took place in the twenty-first century of the pseudo-Christian era, when all their laboratories were demolished, and all their ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... laughing in their sleeves at having tricked him, and by the dread that they may be stirring up armed defenders of the infant King, is in full accord with all that we know of him. The critics who find the story of the massacre 'unhistorical,' because Josephus does not mention it, must surely be very anxious to discredit the evangelist, and very hard pressed for grounds to do so, or they would not commit themselves to the extraordinary ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... when he was writing his pamphlet at Eisleben, is easily intelligible from the slow means of communication then existing. Soon the news came, however, of bands of rioters in Thuringia, busy with the work of pillage, incendiarism, and massacre, and of a rising of the peasantry in the immediate neighbourhood. Towards the end of April they achieved a crowning triumph by their victorious entry into Erfurt, where the preacher, Eberlin of Gunzburg, with true loyalty and courage, but all in vain, had striven, with ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... contemptuously. "What, of Villarayo's men, the sweepings and scum of the place, every one of them armed with a long knife stuck in his scarf that he likes to whip out and use! Hot-blooded savage wretches! Prisoners of war! Once they get the upper hand, there will be a regular massacre. They'll make the schooner a prisoner of war if I don't contrive to get below and fire two or three shots into the little magazine; and that I will do sooner than fall alive into their hands. Do you think you would ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... doubtless," answered Pleydell. "He was old enough to tell what he had seen, and these ruthless scoundrels would not scruple committing a second Bethlehem massacre if they thought their ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott


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