massacred
- 1Simple past and past participle of massacre.
Rebel forces massacred the garrison hours after it surrendered.
The settlers had massacred most of the herd by the end of winter.
Note
One spelling does double duty: the plain past (the army massacred the town) and the participle after have or be (the town was massacred). The figurative uses carry over unchanged, so a team can be massacred in a final and a play massacred by its cast. Careful writers avoid it for a single brutal killing. That use is proscribed, because the word implies many victims who could not resist.
massacred is a form of massacre
massacre, verb: To kill people in large numbers when they can offer little resistance, with indiscriminate and unnecessary violence. Full entry
- Forms
- massacremassacres he/she/itmassacring -ing formmassacred past tense, past participle
- Spelling
- massacre → massacred: add -d
Use it in a sentence
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