butcher

 
Pronunciation: /ˈbʊtʃə/

noun

  • 1a person whose trade is cutting up and selling meat in a shop.
  • a person who slaughters and cuts up animals for food: [with modifier]: a pork butcher
  • a person who kills people indiscriminately or brutally.
  • 2North American informal a person selling refreshments, newspapers, etc. on a train or in a theatre.

verb

[with object]
  • slaughter or cut up (an animal) for food.
  • kill (a person or people) indiscriminately or brutally: they rounded up and butchered 250 people
  • ruin (something) deliberately or through incompetence: the film was butchered by the studio that released it

Phrases

have (or take) a butcher's

British informal have a look.
[butcher's from butcher's hook, rhyming slang for a 'look']

Origin:

Middle English: from an Anglo-Norman French variant of Old French bochier, from boc 'he-goat', probably of the same ultimate origin as buck1