slaughterhouse

[ slaw-ter-hous ]

noun

, plural slaugh·ter·hous·es [slaw, -ter-hou-ziz].

1. a building or place where animals are butchered for food; abattoir.

slaughterhouse

/ ˈslɔːtəˌhaʊs /

noun

1. a place where animals are butchered for food; abattoir

Word History and Origins

Origin of slaughterhouse¹

1325–75; Middle English slautherhus; slaughter, house

Example Sentences

The Sawyers became monsters due to abandonment and neglect; members of the family were employed at the local slaughterhouse until the bolt gun replaced the sledgehammer as the cattle-killing method of choice.

From Slate

Department of Indian Affairs constructed a slaughterhouse on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana and required tribal members to provide the factory's labor in exchange for its beef.

From Salon

The Union Stock Yards in Chicago, the most modern slaughterhouse of the era, opened on Christmas Day in 1865 and marked a turning point for industrial beef production.

From Salon

As is well known, it is wrong for immigrants to kill mammals outside the confines of an American slaughterhouse, where they are by contrast encouraged if not expected, even as children, to carry out the assembly-line killing that results in plastic-wrapped “meat” showing up at the local grocer and being consumed by red-blooded Americans.

From Salon

This approach would allow the federal government to impose effective regulations where the most serious food safety concerns originate: on the farm and in the slaughterhouse.

From Salon

Related Words

• abattoir