massacre

massacre n Massacre, slaughter, butchery, carnage, pogrom are comparable when they mean a great and often wanton killing of human beings.

Massacre implies promiscuous and wholesale slaying, especially of those who are not prepared to defend themselves and can make little or no resistance

{

the tyrannous and bloody deed is done, the most arch act of piteous massacre that ever yet this land was guilty of— Shak.

}

{

the vengeful murder of the mutiny's bloodthirsty ringleader, and the massacre of most of the surviving crew by natives— Dulles

}

Slaughter, basically a butcher's term for the killing of animals used as food, suggests extensive and ruthless killing, whether the scene of that killing be a battle or a massacre

{

the chief... cut his way through the enemy with great slaughter— Irving

}

{

determined not to repeat the slaughter of the First World War, during which hundreds of thousands of soldiers were sacrificed in fruitless frontal attacks— Bethe

}

{

it was no longer a battle but a slaughter .... From nine o'clock in the morning until seven o'clock in the evening, when it began to get dark, the killing went on— Graves

}

Butchery adds to slaughter the implication of exceeding cruelty or of cold-blooded indifference to the sufferings of the victims

{

boasting of his fights, his cruelties and his butcheries— Kingsley

}

{

thus was the butchery waged while the sun clomb Heaven's eastern steep— Shelley

}

Carnage is often not easily distinguishable from slaughter, except that it sometimes carries additional connotations similar to those of massacre

{

a slight resistance was followed by a dreadful carnage— Gibbon

}

{

war and all its deeds of carnage— Whitman

}

Pogrom applies especially to an organized massacre of helpless people carried on usually with the connivance of officials. It is often applied specifically to such a massacre of Jews, especially in one of the European countries

{

the pogroms at Gomel and Kishinev in Russia in 1903

}

{

he carried on a full-scale pogrom against the Jews, slaughtering hundreds of thousands— New Republic

}

{

the Hindus interpret every manifestation of individual violence ... as the launching of a pogrom against them— Edmond Taylor

}

Analogous words: assassination, murdering or murder, slaying, killing (see corresponding verbs at KILL)