butchering

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
butcher/ˈbʊtʃə(r)/

▶noun a person whose trade is cutting up and selling meat in a shop.

■ a person who slaughters and cuts up animals for food.

■ a person who kills brutally.

▶verb

• 1 slaughter or cut up (an animal) for food.

  ■ kill (someone) brutally.

• 2 ruin deliberately or through incompetence.

– phrases
have (or take) a butcher's Brit. informal have a look. [butcher's from butcher's hook, rhyming sl. for a ‘look’.]

– derivatives
butchery noun (pl. butcheries).

– origin ME: from an Anglo-Norman Fr. var. of OFr. bochier, from boc ‘he-goat’, prob. of the same ultimate origin as buck1.