List of events named massacres
The following is a list of events for which one of the commonly accepted names includes the word "massacre". Definition. "Massacre" is defined in the "Oxford English Dictionary" as "the indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people or (less commonly) animals; carnage, butchery, slaughter in numbers". It also states that the term is used "in the names of certain massacres of history". The first recorded use in English of the word "massacre" in the name of an event is due to Christopher Marlowe, who in c. 1600 referred to what is now known as the St.  Bartholomew's Day massacre as "The massacre at Paris". "Massacre" can also be used as a verb, as "To kill (people or, less commonly, animals) in numbers, esp. brutally and indiscriminately". The first usage of which was "(c. 1588) Men which make no conscience for gaine sake, to breake the law of the æternall, and massaker soules (...) are dangerous subjects", and this usage is not recorded in this list. There are many alternative terms with similar connotations, such as butchery, carnage, bloodbath, mass killing, atrocity, etc. as well as euphemisms such as "Vespers", "Blutgericht" or "attack", "incident", "tragedy" (etc.), use  of which are outside the scope of this list. "Massacre" is also used figuratively to describe dramatic events that did not involve any deaths, such as the "Hilo massacre" and the "Saturday Night Massacre"; this usage is also outside of the scope of this list.