massacring

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of massacre.

   Reports described soldiers massacring entire families during the night raid.

   The general stood accused of massacring thousands of captured rebels.

   Note

   The silent final e of massacre drops before -ing, so the spelling is massacring, never massacreing. The participle carries every sense of the verb, including the figurative ones: massacring the visiting team, or massacring a sonata on stage. One use needs care. Careful writers frown on applying it to a single especially brutal killing and keep it for killing in numbers.

   The home side spent the second half massacring the visitors.

   The tenor was massacring the aria, and the audience knew it.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   An instance of brutally killing a large number of people; a massacre.

   The history book described the massacring of the village in grim detail.

   Survivors never forgot the massacring that took place during that bitter winter.

   Similarmassacre, slaughter, butchery, bloodbath

   Note

   Here the -ing form has hardened into a countable noun with its own plural, massacrings. That lets it name separate events, not only the ongoing act described by the participle. Massacre remains the everyday noun beside it, but massacring keeps something of its verb: a killing seen as an act being carried out.

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