These words refer to the taking of lives. Kill is the most general word here, applying to any kind of death-dealing activity: a drought that killed our fruit trees; a pesticide to kill thrips; two people killed in a car accident; a madman who threatened to kill me; soldiers killed in action. The word’s very generality allows its use in situations where cause is assigned for other kinds of death: children killed by neglect; the rising number of people killed by heart disease. The word can even apply where no life is actually lost: a veto that killed the bill; their decision to kill the news story after it had appeared in the early edition. Murder refers less ambiguously to the crime in which one person intentionally kills another: He admitted that he had accidentally killed his wife, but denied that he had murdered her in cold blood. Sometimes, the word can refer to a brutal killing , as in war: naked aggression in which one nation set out to murder the citizens of an adjoining state. Hyperbolically, the word can point to the mishandling of anything: expressionless actors who murder their lines.

Assassinate is a specific form of murder in which someone kills a public figure, usually a political leader, for whatever reason: a dictator who had survived three attempts to assassinate him. Execute can refer to capital punishment that a state exacts in reprisal for certain crimes: executed for treason; The man who murdered his wife was executed on the gallows, according to law. Sometimes the word can refer to an on-the-spot killing of enemies or prisoners by an opponent, as in a war, occupation or insurrection: here, the notion of legal sanction may be absent: the six million executed by the Nazis; a brigand who ordered his captives executed by firing squad. Dispatch can function like execute in reference to official case, the word stresses efficiency and swiftness: The emperor ordered him executed by slow torture, rather than allowing him to be mercifully dispatched on the battlefield; the Reign of Terror during which hundreds were daily dispatched by the guillotine. The word can also indicate the death stroke itself: a pistol with which to dispatch those not killed by the firing squad’s volley.

Butcher and slaughter can both refer to the killing of animals for food. Slaughter is the preferred term in the meat industry, possibly because butcher has implications of brutality or because butcher can also apply to the cutting or carving of meat at any point after the actual killing . Also, butcher usually indicates a small-scale operation, whereas slaughter can better suggest mass killing as well: a shed in which the farmer butchered livestock to feed his own family; legislation to control the slaughtering of cattle in abattoirs. Both words take on extremely disapproving overtones when applied to the killing of people. Butcher here suggests bungling inexpertness or sadistic brutality: a rapist who had butchered his victim with a razor; dictators who butcher those foolish enough to dissent. Slaughter specifically suggests the killing of great numbers of people: Teutonic hordes who advanced across Europe, sacking and slaughtering .

Massacre usually applies solely to the brutal killing of large numbers of people. In this, it is close to one aspect of slaughter, but it is more specific in suggesting the wholesale and often total destruction of a group of relatively defenceless people by another, as in war, persecution or revenge: the Incas who were massacred by the Spaniards; Herod ordered all infants in the land to be massacred . Slay can now sound outdated as a close synonym for murder or slaughter except in Biblical reference.

• David slew Goliath; Charioteers were sent to slay the escaping Jews.

But brevity has given the word currency in newspaper headlines: Underworld leader slain . The past participle, in fact, is now more frequently used than other forms of the verb a battle in which twenty were slain .