carnage
nounattested in dialogue
- United Kingdom//ˈkɑː.nɪdʒ//
- United States//ˈkɑɹ.nɪd͡ʒ//
Death and destruction.
noun
- 1
Death and destruction.
There was carnage after the school play ended with 96 deaths.
Unleash the wolves / Carnage has no rules / Comparison, competition / We'll bury one and all, all
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
figurativeAny great loss by a team; a game in which one team wins overwhelmingly.
The game against Sri Lanka and Australia was carnage with Australia winning by 287 runs.
- 4
figurativeA heavy drinking binge and its aftermath.
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.
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
figurativeAny chaotic situation.
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”). By surface analysis, Latin carn- + -age.
Forms
- plural
- carnages