Butcher: A Trade, a Shop, and a Verb Nobody Wants Applied to Their Work
A butcher prepares and sells meat. As a verb it means to slaughter, or to ruin something through clumsy handling — a song, a language, a translation.
A butcher cuts and sells meat, and the word covers both the person and the shop. The verb went a darker way: to butcher a job, a name or a song means to make a mess of it, and the image behind that is deliberately unpleasant.
- Someone who prepares and sells meat. *Ask the butcher for a shoulder of lamb.*
- A meat shop. *There is a butcher on the corner.*
- To slaughter brutally (verb). *Whole villages were butchered.*
- To spoil through clumsiness. *He butchered the closing speech.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | butcher | A skilled butcher. |
| Verb | butcher | Do not butcher my name. |
| Noun | butchery | Traditional butchery. |
| Compound | butcher's block | A worn butcher's block. |
| Compound | butcher's shop | The butcher's shop opens at seven. |
How it is used in a sentence
- I am going to the butcher's.The apostrophe survives even without the word shop.
- The editor butchered my article.Cut it badly, not merely shortened it.
- Have a butcher's at this.Cockney rhyming slang — butcher's hook means look.
Trades that name their shops the same way
- The butcher's — meat
- The baker's — bread
- The chemist's — medicines, in British English
- The greengrocer's — fruit and vegetables
- English names these shops after the person, with a possessive that no longer needs its noun
From Old French *bouchier*, originally a dealer in goat meat, from *bouc*, a he-goat. The word narrowed to one animal and then widened to all of them on its way into English.
Butcher or butcher's?
Butcher is the person, butcher's is the shop. *I saw the butcher* and *I went to the butcher's* mean different things.
Is butcher offensive as a verb?
It is strong. Applied to someone's work it accuses them of clumsy damage, so it is rarely said to their face.