the.com/carnage
What's left when chaos stops negotiating and starts winning.
means Widespread, bloody destruction — a scene of mass violence and wreckage, used literally or (now more often) as hyperbole for utter devastation.
from Straight from French carnage, rooted in Latin caro/carnis, 'flesh' — the same root that gives us 'carnal' and 'carnivore.' Originally the word named a heap of slaughtered bodies, flesh piled up after battle; English borrowed it in that grim literal sense before it loosened, over time, into the all-purpose word for any scene of ruin, from wars to wrecked kitchens.
- origin
- Latin caro, meaning flesh
- original use
- 17th century term for mass slaughter
- modern drift
- now also describes a messy teenager's bedroom
- linguistic cousin
- shares a root with carnival and carnivore