carnage /KAR-nəj/. noun. Extensive, indiscriminate slaughter, most often of human beings. A collection of carcasses. From French carnage, from Italian carnaggio (murder, slaughter), from Latin carnaticum (slaughter of animals), from carnum (flesh). Various sources note that “[Robert] Southey tried to make a verb of it,” so I’ve included that example as well.
“The carnage of 9/11 generated an intense surge of patriotic solidarity, even with America’s Babylon, a city scandalously and notoriously indifferent to Heartland values.” (Simon Schama)
“More athletes actually got killed in the hand-to-hands, but they lacked the dramatic, cathartic aspects of football, the sheer carnage when 144 men were involved at once, the drenching of the arena stands with blood.” (Ursula K. LeGuin)
“Mark! where his carnage and his conquests cease!
He makes a solitude, and calls it – peace!”
(Lord Byron)
“…And swords rage where the Eagles cry & the Vultures laugh saying
Now comes the night of Carnage now the flesh of Kings & Princes…”
(William Blake)
“All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.” (W.H. Auden)
“…there was vast confusion, havoc, conflict, honourable death, bloody battle, horrible consternation, and upon Tal Mavra, a thousand banners: there was an outrageous carnage, and the rage of spears and hast signs of violent indignation.” (Robert Southey)
“Had it been pure cowardice, Nat would have conducted his operation from a vantage point allowing him but little if any propinquity with the carnage, the bloody proceedings themselves.” (William Styron)
“This is kind of a typical Joyce-Brakus point. The match is carnage of a particular high-level sort: it’s like watching an extremely large and powerful predator get torn to pieces by an even larger and more powerful predator.” (David Foster Wallace)
“…between 1989 and 1994 more black men were murdered in the streets of America than died in the entire Vietnam War. America did not want to talk about the human damage, or the deeper causes of the carnage. But then here came rap, like the American nightmare come to life. The disturbing shit you thought you locked away for good, buried at the bottom of the ocean, suddenly materialized in your kid’s bedroom, laughing it off, cursing loud, and grabbing its nuts, refusing to be ignored anymore.” (Jay-Z)
“It was too late to check the wasting brand,
And Desolation reap’d the famish’d land;
The torch was lighted, and the flame was spread,
And Carnage smiled upon her daily dead.”
(Lord Byron)
“In deference to such spectacular carnage it is perhaps perverse to dwell upon one person’s death, but we are creatures so constituted that the passing of one friend or one acquaintance has a profounder effect that that of 100,000 strangers.” (Louis de Bernières)