slaughterhouse
Americannoun
plural
slaughterhousesnoun
Etymology
Origin of slaughterhouse
Explanation
A slaughterhouse is where animals are killed so they can be used for meat. Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle exposes the unsafe working conditions of a slaughterhouse in Chicago. Good times. Not. In order for people to eat meat, animals have to be slaughtered, or killed, and the place where this happens on a large scale is a slaughterhouse. Sometimes it's also called an abattoir. The word stems from a Scandinavian root and is related to the Old Norseslatr, "a butchering." The word slaughterhouse can also refer to a violent situation. In Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse Five," war prisoners are housed in an abandoned slaughterhouse, which is also a metaphor for war itself.
Vocabulary lists containing slaughterhouse
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Smithfield Foods SFD 2.24%increase; green up pointing triangle plans to build a large hog slaughterhouse in South Dakota, marking the first new facility built by America’s top pork producer in decades.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 16, 2026
The biggest chunk of this is for meat products, which makes sense, considering the biggest issues in meat safety stem from the farm and from the slaughterhouse.
From Salon • Aug. 15, 2024
It said that livestock farmers, cheesemakers, slaughterhouse owners and feed suppliers had been informed about the new restrictions.
From BBC • Jul. 30, 2024
He was just getting started when news broke that 1986 Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand had reportedly died in a slaughterhouse in Japan.
From Seattle Times • May 1, 2024
About a fortnight after my arrival in Cambridge, we went out to the local slaughterhouse to get a horse heart for a new myoglobin preparation.
From "Double Helix" by James D. Watson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
