mass murder
38
6.7
- noun
- /mæs ˈmɜrdər/
- NSFW
:
asesinato en masa
- Witnesses reported seeing chaos and fear during the horrific mass murder at the concert.
And she works with the police to try and solve a mass murder event really.
- And she works with the police to try and solve a mass murder event really.
- It was a frenzy of killing, a frenzy of mass murder.
- And the reason why they do these huge mass murders is so that they can go down in history.
- And, you know, being told that you are in any way responsible for a mass murder just sucks.
- In particular, the lesson of not standing by the Holocaust did not begin with mass murder.
- Would be mass murder so easy in a school?
- We have been through this cataclysm of the Holocaust, First World War, Holocaust, war, communism, mass murder, right?
Examples
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The world cannot stand by and see the mass murder of anyone.
Blog text (6) -
This is the fifth mass murder in the past two days.
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Hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing mass murder in Europe are turned back to die as a result.
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These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat but they have failed.
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Movements to crush dissent can quickly escalate from episodic violence to mass murder.
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The government launched an investigation into the recent mass murder that shocked the entire community.
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After the mass murder, officials urged citizens to remain vigilant and report any suspicious activity.
Synonyms
198
7.0
The violent killing of many people in a cruel way
107
4.6
Killing or hurting many people in war and other violence
80
5.7
Violent killing of a large number of people
65
8.2
A mass killing of people, often during war or attacks
45
7.0
A violent event in which many people are killed or a situation with very large losses
6
9.3
A large-scale killing of people during war or political violence
1
8.1
The very violent killing of many people
A violent event where many people are killed and people feel deep sorrow
A killing of many people at once that is cruel
How Many
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and transparently derived from combining 'mass' (large accumulation) with 'murder' (intentional killing): it straightforwardly denotes the killing of many people. This compositional pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows normal English noun + noun compounding, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
The term mass murder comes from a simple picture: mass means a large number and murder means killing, so imagine one event that kills many people at once. That's why it now means 'the killing of many people on purpose at the same time'.