Etymology: < Middle French, French massacre massacre, butchery (mid 16th cent.) < Old French maçacre , macecre , macecle , maçacle slaughterhouse, butcher's shop (both late 11th cent; compare Anglo-Norman maçacre and macegreff n., with unexplained second element), slaughter of many people (c1150; > post-classical Latin mazacrium , masacrium slaughter (1218, 1222), Portuguese massacre (1596), Spanish masacre ); further etymology uncertain. Sense 3 represents a late secondary borrowing < French (1581 in this sense).The origin of the Old French word is uncertain: for a useful summary of theories see E. Gamillscheg Etym. Wörterbuch der französischen Sprache (ed. 2, 1969) at massacre; by Französisches etymol. Wörterbuch referred ultimately to the same base as mace n.² The Old French noun is attested earlier than the verb (see massacre v.), although it has been argued that this is not their historical order. In John Garland (fl. 1202–52), maçacre glosses post-classical Latin macella shambles, butcher's shop (1010, a1195), a variant of classical Latin macellum provision-market (see macellarious adj.). Macella can scarcely, on phonological grounds, be the sole etymon, but it might perhaps be an element in a blend. The post-classical Latin form mazacaria meat market is attested a1200 in a British source; similarly, macellarius butcher (1056 in this sense; the classical Latin sense is ‘provision-dealer’) is attested in the form macecrarius at the early date of c1067 in a British source. The English word is sometimes stressed on the second syllable in 16th– and 17th–cent. verse, e.g. in quot. 1595 at sense 1c, and in:1607 B. Jonson Volpone iv. ii. sig. I3^v That you would not Haue done this dire massacre, on your honour. By the mid 17th cent. this stress was probably obsolete. For early evidence of stress on the first syllable see quot. 1594 at sense 1a (the word is always stressed thus in Shakespeare). For a note on the forms massacree and massacry see massacre v.

Etymology: < Middle French, French massacrer to slaughter (mid 16th cent.) < Old French maçacrer (1306), macecrer (1213), macecler (c1160); further etymology uncertain (see massacre n.).The origin of the form with /iː/ or /ɪ/ in the third syllable is unclear. For the verb, it is reported in Eng. Dial. Dict. to have been widespread in England from Northumberland to Somerset in the 19th cent.; it is recorded in a few 20th-cent. regional glossaries. In Dict. Amer. Regional Eng. it is reported to be chiefly U.S. Southern and South Midland, and old-fashioned, with pronunciation /ˈmæsəkri/ or occasionally /mæsəˈkri/. Sc. National Dict. records pronunciations with stress on the second syllable for Scots forms.