Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun One who slaughters and dresses animals for food or market.
  • noun One who sells meats.
  • noun One that kills brutally or indiscriminately.
  • noun A vendor, especially one on a train or in a theater.
  • noun One who bungles something.
  • transitive verb To slaughter or prepare (animals) for market.
  • transitive verb To kill brutally or indiscriminately.
  • transitive verb To botch; bungle: synonym: botch.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who slaughters animals for market; one whose occupation is the killing of animals for food.“
  • noun An executioner.
  • noun One who kills in a cruel or bloody manner; one guilty of indiscriminate slaughter.
  • noun Figuratively, an unskilful workman or performer; a bungler; a botch.
  • noun A long drink of beer.
  • To kill or slaughter for food or for market.
  • To murder, especially in an unusually bloody or barbarous manner.
  • Figuratively, to treat bunglingly; make a botch of; spoil by bad work: as, to butcher a job; the play was butchered by the actors.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who slaughters animals, or dresses their flesh for market; one whose occupation it is to kill animals for food.
  • noun A slaughterer; one who kills in large numbers, or with unusual cruelty; one who causes needless loss of life, as in battle.
  • noun such flesh of animals slaughtered for food as is sold for that purpose by butchers, as beef, mutton, lamb, and pork.
  • transitive verb To kill or slaughter (animals) for food, or for market.
  • transitive verb To murder, or kill, especially in an unusually bloody or barbarous manner.
  • transitive verb to bungle badly; to botch; -- used also when an object is damaged (literally or figuratively) in an activity.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A person who prepares and sells meat (and sometimes also slaughters the animals).
  • noun by extension A brutal or indiscriminate killer.
  • noun Cockney rhyming slang A look.
  • noun informal, obsolete A person who sells candy, drinks, etc. in theatres, trains, circuses, etc.
  • verb transitive To slaughter animals and prepare meat for market.
  • verb transitive To kill brutally.
  • verb transitive To ruin something, often to the point of defamation.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun someone who makes mistakes because of incompetence
  • noun a retailer of meat
  • noun a person who slaughters or dresses meat for market
  • verb kill (animals) usually for food consumption
  • noun a brutal indiscriminate murderer

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English bucher, from Old French bouchier, from bouc, boc, he-goat, probably of Celtic origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Anglo-Norman boucher, from Old French bouchier ("goat slaughterer"), from bouc ("goat"), of Germanic origin. More at buck.

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Examples

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  • I went up to the school

    I took a walk up Castlehill

    For every step there is a local boy who wants to be a hero

    Do you want to do it now?

    Outside the butcher's with a knife and a bike chain.

    (I could be dreaming, by Belle and Sebastian)

    August 24, 2008