massacre

noun

1 a cold-blooded massacre of innocent civilians:

slaughter, wholesale slaughter, mass slaughter, wholesale killing, indiscriminate killing;

murder, murdering, mass murder, mass homicide, execution, mass execution, destruction, mass destruction, annihilation, extermination, liquidation, decimation, carnage, butchery, bloodbath, bloodletting, pogrom, genocide, ethnic cleansing, holocaust, Shoah, night of the long knives;

literary slaying;

rare battue, hecatomb.

2 informal the match was an 8–0 massacre:

rout, crushing defeat, overwhelming defeat, defeat, trouncing, annihilation;

debacle, fiasco;

informal licking, hammering, clobbering, thrashing, pasting, drubbing, hiding, caning, demolition, going-over, pounding;

North American, informal shellacking.

verb

1 thousands were brutally massacred by the soldiers:

slaughter, butcher, murder, kill, annihilate, exterminate, execute, liquidate, eliminate, destroy, decimate, kill off, wipe out, mow down, cut down, cut to pieces, put to the sword, put to death, send to the gas chambers;

literary slay.

2 informal they were absolutely massacred in the final:

trounce, defeat utterly, beat hollow, win a resounding victory over, annihilate, drub, rout, give someone a drubbing, crush, overwhelm, bring someone to their knees;

informal hammer, clobber, thrash, paste, give someone a pasting, whip, pound, pulverize, crucify, demolish, destroy, wipe the floor with, take to the cleaners, make mincemeat of, murder, flatten, turn inside out, run rings around;

British, informal stuff, marmalize;

North American, informal shellac, blow out, cream, skunk;

US, informal own.

massacre Oxford Dictionary of English