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Glite Dictionary
💥 A deadly situation 🍖 A kitchen machine
meat grinder

meat grinder

2 7.0
A situation that causes a lot of harm and suffering to people over time
  • noun
  • /miːt ˈɡraɪndər/
  • Literature
translation icon : matanza
  • I think you are seeing the results that occur when data is thrown into the meat grinder.

It's like you're being, you know, put through the meat grinder, I always say, and turned into a sausage, a professional sausage.

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Examples

  • TOD is an intellectually rough place, a "meat grinder," but there are still understood rules.

    Blog text (11)

  • The elite will send us, our kids, our family into the meat grinder of war because it is good, lucrative business.

    Blog text (31)

  • It's like you're being, you know, put through the meat grinder, I always say, and turned into a sausage, a professional sausage.

    Harvard University

  • I've lost almost a million young men, sending them into this meat grinder, which at some point it's got to take a toll on the morale and the popularity.

    The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway

  • The soldiers returned from the front lines, looking like they had been through a meat grinder after months of intense battle.

  • The ongoing conflict has turned the region into a meat grinder, leaving destruction and suffering in its wake.

  • Many families were caught in the meat grinder of war, suffering loss and hardship as the fighting continued relentlessly.

Antonyms

safety
∞ 1.0

A place or condition that protects you from danger

peace
∞ 1.0

A calm, friendly relationship between people or groups without argument

How Severe

meat grinder
  • Literature
2 7.0
catastrophe
176 7.0
crisis
∞ 3.1
problem
∞ 1.2

Surface Forms

meat grinder singular
meat grinders plural

Morphology

meat + grinder

The literal image of a machine that grinds meat readily maps onto a destructive, consuming process, so a learner who knows 'meat' and 'grinder' can infer a rough sense of severe destruction or being 'ground up'. However, the phrase is metaphorical and conveys additional evaluative and contextual nuance (violence, relentlessness) that is not strictly derivable from the parts, so it is not fully transparent.

Etymology

Meat grinder is also used for a brutal situation because people picture a machine that grinds meat into pieces without care. That's why it describes 'a situation that destroys people or leaves them exhausted'.