October Word 4

The month's latest random act of typing (See the first post in the series for explanation)October 4. ButcherHere’s a bloody one, eh? Butcher. Slaughter. Carve, flense, cut, slice, render. A word for gore and guts and oddly affecting noises, slippery, salty, hunks and gobbets of flesh (and isn’t gobbets a great word all on its own?) Butchering is a cold, practical word for attending to the debris of a dead creature but somehow it’s also about making something dead too? Butchery is about taking something to pieces, clinically, to make use of all its parts, cataloging, putting each chunk and bone, cartilage and organ to use.It’s one of those interesting nouns that’s also a verb.  A butcher is one who butchers. The act defines the actor. If you butcher something, you are a butcher. But is that bad? I don’t know. Context matters, I think, as usual.