massacre

A massacre is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenseless. It is generally used to describe killing of civilians en masse by an armed group. The word is a loan of a French term for "butchery" or "carnage". Other terms with overlapping scope include war crime, pogrom, mass killing, mass murder, and extrajudicial killing. Etymology Massacre derives from late 16th century Middle French word macacre meaning "slaughterhouse" or "butchery". Further origins are dubious, though may be related to Latin macellum "provisions store, butcher shop". The Middle French word macecr "butchery, carnage" is first recorded in the late 11th century. Its primary use remained the context of animal slaughter (in hunting terminology referring to the head of a stag) well into the 18th century. The use of macecre "butchery" of the mass killing of people dates to the 12th century, implying people being "slaughtered like animals". The term did not necessarily imply a multitude of victims, e.g. Fénelon in Dialogue des Morts (1712) uses l'horride massacre de Blois ("the horrid massacre at [the chateau of] Blois") of the assassination of Henry I, Duke of Guise (1588), while Boileau, Satires XI (1698) has L'Europe fut un champ de massacre et d'horreur "Europe was a field of massacre and horror" of the European wars of religion.