Butcher

A butcher is someone who prepares various meats and other related goods for sale. Many butchers sell their goods through private stores, but nowadays, most meat is sold through supermarkets.

The Butcher and his Servant, drawn and engraved by J. Amman (Sixteenth Century).

See also: Slaughterhouse

Other Idiomatic uses

• Butcher is also an English term used to describe a person who inflicts cuts and incisions in an unorderly manner - contrary to the surgeon-like exactness a professional butcher needs to slaughter cattle.

• Butcher is well-known as being the family name of descendants of professional butchers; akin to "Baker" and "Carpenter".

• Butcher (old, informal) a person who sells candy, drinks, etc. in theatres, trains, circuses , etc.

• Butcher is als treh name for a 200ml glass of beer in South Australia

• Butchers A Cockney rhyming slang term for a look, popularized by the Zafira advert

• Butcher differs from meatcutter (or Meat Cutter) in that the former specializes in the slaughter of animals, as well as the removal of innards (evisceration), in order to prepare a carcass for the processing of retail cuts. The latter specializes in processing eviscerated carcasses and boxed meat (primals and sub-primals) into retail cuts for sale in specialty shops or supermarkets.

People known as "The Butcher"

Various people in history have gained the epithet of "The Butcher", usually as a result of "butchering" the population of a given city or area. Examples include:

• The Butcher of the Somme was an epithet given to Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig as a result of his tactics during World War I

• Ali Hassan al-Majid gained the name The Butcher of Kurdistan after his actions during the al-Anfal Campaign

• Due to his involvement in the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia, Reinhard Heydrich was commonly referred to as The Butcher of Prague

• Both Michael O'Dwyer and General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer became known as the Butchers of Amritsar following their actions during the Amritsar Massacre

• The Bloody Butcher was a nickname for The Duke of Cumberland, second son of George II of England. So called from his barbarities in suppressing the rebellion of the Young Pretender

• The Royalist Butcher was a nickname for Blaise de Montluc, distinguished for his cruelties to the Protestants in the reign of Charles IX of France

• Bill the Butcher was a pseudonym taken by gang-member William Poole, on whom the fictional character William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting of Martin Scorsese's 2002 film Gangs of New York is largely based

• Rodolfo Fierro received the name El Carnicero aka The Butcher as well. He was known to be the right-hand general to Pancho Villa

• 'Butcher is a progressive thrash metal band from Brazil (Belo Horizonte, MG - Cogumelo Records). [1]

• The Butcher was one of the many gimmicks used by professional wrestler Edward Leslie.

 

Butchers selling meat in Morocco