Matanza
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A place where animals are slaughtered, for their hides, meat, tallow, etc, particularly in a Latin American context; a slaughterhouse. US
"Captain Hall has given a very excellent description of a matanza, the slaughtering place of a large hacienda, where cattle are killed in numbers with the view of making charqui : the fleshy parts alone are used, all the soft fat being carefully cut off […]"
- 2 A slaughter, as of cattle or pigs (for their hides, meat, etc), of tuna, or of people; the act of butchering or slaughtering. US
"The slaughtering period (matanza) lasts usually a month, and is a holiday for the shepherds, […] and fatten themselves and their families for a long time with sheep's heads and livers. The cooked meat, from which the fat has been extracted (carne de chito), lies there in complete mountains after a matanza : it is bought up by the dealers and conveyed to the villages, where the Indians buy it at the market for a mere trifle […]"
Example
More examples"Captain Hall has given a very excellent description of a matanza, the slaughtering place of a large hacienda, where cattle are killed in numbers with the view of making charqui : the fleshy parts alone are used, all the soft fat being carefully cut off […]"
Etymology
Borrowed from Spanish matanza (“slaughter”), from matar (“to kill”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.