carnage

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French carnage, from a Norman or Picard variant Old Northern French) of Old French charnage, from char (“flesh”), or from Vulgar Latin *carnaticum (“slaughter of animals”), itself from Latin carnem, accusative of caro (“flesh”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑː.nɪdʒ/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑɹ.nɪd͡ʒ/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

carnage (usually uncountable, plural carnages)

1. Death and destruction.

   Synonyms: massacre, bloodbath

   • 2019, Fit for an Autopsy (lyrics and music), “The Sea of Tragic Beasts”:

     Carnage consumes all we’ve ever loved / The innocent blistered by the flame / Trial by fire we burn in shame

2. The corpses, gore, etc. that remain after a massacre.
3. (figurative, sports) Any great loss by a team; a game in which one team wins overwhelmingly.
4. (figurative, slang) A heavy drinking binge and its aftermath.
   • 2014, Simon Spence, Happy Mondays: Excess All Areas:

     The lads had recently returned from a wild summer on the party island of Ibiza, an increasingly popular hotspot for working-class British youth. But this was not a scene of drunken holiday carnage in tacky discos.

   • 2015, Adam Jones, Bomb: My Autobiography:

     Within three hours we'd drunk the place dry. Miraculously, we all made it back on the bus, but I've never seen a more bacchanalian scene of wanton debauchery than the ride back to the hotel. It was total carnage.

5. (figurative, slang) Any chaotic situation.
   • 2017 January 20, Donald Trump, The Inaugural Address‎^[1]:

     Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories, scattered like tombstones across the across the landscape of our nation, an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge, and the crime, and the gangs, and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

Synonyms

• massacre
• bloodbath
• (a drinking binge): rampage

Derived terms

• carnaged
• dot-carnage

Translations

death and destruction

• Bulgarian: клане (bg) n (klane), сеч (bg) f (seč)
• Catalan: carnatge m

  Mandarin: 大屠殺 / 大屠杀 (zh) (dàtúshā), 大屠杀 (zh) (dàtúshā), 屠殺 / 屠杀 (zh) (túshā), 屠杀 (zh) (túshā), 慘案 / 惨案 (zh) (cǎn'àn), 惨案 (zh) (cǎn'àn)

• Czech: masakr (cs) m, krveprolití (cs) n, řež (cs) f
• Dutch: bloedbad (nl) n
• Finnish: verilöyly (fi)
• French: carnage (fr)
• German: Gemetzel (de) n, Abschlachtung (de) f
• Greek: ανθρωποσφαγή (el) f (anthroposfagí), μακελειό (el) n (makeleió), εκατόμβη (el) (ekatómvi)
• Hebrew: מרחץ דמים
• Hungarian: vérontás (hu)
• Icelandic: eyðing (is) f
• Irish: eirleach m
• Italian: carneficina (it) f, carnaio m
• Japanese: 大虐殺 (ja) (たいぎゃくさつ, daigyakusatsu), 修羅 (ja) (しゅら, shura)
• Kazakh: қырғын (qyrğyn)
• Korean: 대학살 (ko) (daehaksal)
• Latin: strāgēs f
• Maori: tārukenga
• Old English: wæl
• Ottoman Turkish: قان (kan)
• Polish: rzeź (pl) f, jatka (pl)
• Portuguese: massacre (pt) m, carnagem f
• Russian: резня́ (ru) f (reznjá), бо́йня (ru) f (bójnja), побо́ище (ru) n (pobóišče)
• Scottish Gaelic: àr m, marbhadh m
• Serbo-Croatian: pokolj (sh) m, masakr (sh) m
• Spanish: carnicería (es) f, masacre (es) m, disused: carnaje m / mortaldad f, matanza (es) f, colloquial: escabechina (es) f / degollina f, matazón f, mortandad (es) f, hecatombe (es) f

what remains after a massacre

• Maori: tārukenga
• Spanish: carnicería (es) f

Anagrams

• cranage

French

Etymology

Inherited from Middle French carnage, itself probably from a Norman or Picard (Old Northern French) variant of Old French charnage, itself from char (see also chair (“flesh”)), or from a Medieval Latin carnāticum (“slaughter of animals”), from Latin carnem. See also Old Occitan carnatge, Italian carnaggio.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kaʁ.naʒ/

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

carnage m (plural carnages)

1. carnage (all senses)

Further reading

• “carnage”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Middle French

Etymology

Probably from a Norman or Picard (Old Northern French) variant of Old French charnage, itself from char (“flesh”), or from a Medieval Latin carnaticum (“slaughter of animals”), from Latin carō, carnem.

Noun

carnage m (plural carnages)

1. a piece of meat used as bait

Descendants

• → English: carnage
• French: carnage

References

• charnage on Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330–1500) (in French)