slain

1. 1
   verb

   Past participle of slay.

   The hero had slain the beast long before the villagers awoke.

   Thousands were slain during the final days of the siege.

   Note

   The participle goes after have in perfect tenses (had slain) and after be in the passive (were slain). The simple past is a different word, slew, so 'the knight slew the dragon' but 'the dragon was slain.' Because the killing and stamping-out meanings of slay are literary, slain carries that elevated register. It suits heroes, sieges and old battles more than plain modern reporting.

2. 2
   nounpluralwith the

   Those who have been killed, especially in battle or by an act of violence.

   The general ordered that the slain be given a proper burial at dawn.

   Among the slain were several civilians caught in the crossfire.

   Similardead, fallen

   Oppositeliving, survivors

   Note

   The past participle turned into a noun, and it behaves like the dead or the wounded: always with the, always plural (the slain were buried, never a slain). Its home is elevated writing. Byron, in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1816), gazes on 'ghastly trophies of the slain' at Morat, and Mary Elizabeth Lewis in 1906 calls the Valkyries 'choosers of the valorous slain.'

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