List of events named massacres

This is a list of events for which one of the commonly accepted names includes the word "massacre". 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 "Marlowe (c1600) (title) The massacre at Paris", (a reference to the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre). 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 "1588 J. PENRY Viewe Publ. Wants Wales 65 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.

Massacre is also used figuratively and idiomatically for events that do not involve any deaths, such as the Saturday Night Massacre, which refers to the firing and resignations of political appointees during the Watergate scandal. Such events are not listed in the table below.

List of events
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