carnage

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French carnage, recorded in French in the 16th century,^[2][3][4][5] from Italian carnaggio (“slaughter, murder; also all kinds of flesh meat”),^[2][6][4] from Medieval Latin carnāticum (“flesh meat”), which also meant the meat that tenants owed to their feudal lords.^[2][4][7] The Latin noun is formed from Latin carō (“flesh”) and the suffix -āticum, the source of -age.^[5][8][9] Etymonline traces carō, originally "a piece of flesh", to Proto-Indo-European *sker- (“to cut”).^[3][10] The OED notes the corresponding Old French charnage, with a northern form carnage, meaning the flesh of animals, a meat feast, or the season or day when meat may be eaten,^[2] and Weekley mentions its use for the church season when meat was allowed.^[6] The Anglo-Norman word is recorded from about 1170 for flesh, including the sins of the flesh.^[11] The American Heritage Dictionary instead takes the French word as ultimately a variant of charnage, from char (“flesh, meat”) and its variant charn, perhaps a Norman or Picard form or one influenced by Old Occitan carnatge.^[10] The word is related to carnal, carrion and charnel.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The slaughter of a great number of people: 1600, in P. Holland's translation of Livy's Romane Historie.^[2][4] Etymonline dates it to about 1600,^[3] and Merriam-Webster gives 1614.^[7]

Semantic evolution

In English the word has always been used more often of the slaughter of people than of animals.^[3] Milton used it in 1667 for the bodies of the slain, a heap of carcasses, a sense the OED doubts survives on its own.^[2][8] Johnson (1755) gave both senses, slaughter and "heaps of flesh", quoting Milton for the second.^[12] Byron personified slaughter as Carnage in 1814.^[2] Southey tried to make a verb of it in 1795.^[3] Since the mid-19th century the word has been used figuratively of widespread damage or chaos (1848), and since the early 20th, in a weaker sense, of violent fighting, especially a contest that one side wins easily (1902).^[2]

Timeline

• 1600 – the slaughter of a great number, especially of people.^[2][4] Merriam-Webster dates the word to 1614.^[7]
• 1667 – carcasses collectively, a heap of the dead, in Milton's Paradise Lost.^[2]
• 1795 – an attempt by Southey to use it as a verb.^[3]
• 1814 – slaughter personified, in Byron's Lara.^[2]
• 1848 – figurative: widespread damage, ruin or chaos.^[2]
• 1902 – weakened: violent fighting, especially a one-sided contest.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The killing of large numbers of people, especially in battle; slaughter, massacre: The carnage at the river crossing appalled the reporters.^[13][7][2]
2. Widespread damage, ruin or chaos: the carnage on the stock market.^[2]
3. (archaic) The bodies of the slain; a heap of corpses.^{[7][8][12][2]}

Related words

• carnal
• carrion
• charnel
• incarnate

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
7. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
12. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins