Definition

Noun: 1. A kitchen appliance or tool for grinding meat: A device, typically with a hand crank or electric motor, that cuts meat into small pieces by forcing it through a plate with small holes. 2. A situation or process that causes severe damage, destruction, or high attrition: Any relentless, destructive action or system that crushes or wears down people or things, often through repetitive, violent, or oppressive force.

Examples

• Noun (Literal - Appliance):
  • She used the meat grinder to make fresh hamburger patties.
  • Attach the coarse plate to the meat grinder for this recipe.
• Noun (Figurative - Destructive Process):
  • The first wave of infantry attacks was thrown into the meat grinder of the enemy's defenses.
  • Working in that high-pressure law firm is a meat grinder; very few associates last more than two years.

Advanced Usage

• The figurative sense is often used to describe war, brutal competition, or oppressive systems. It emphasizes the dehumanizing, grinding, and destructive nature of the situation.
  • The trench warfare of 1916 became a horrific meat grinder, consuming hundreds of thousands of lives.

Variants and Related Words

• Meat mincer (noun, chiefly British English): A synonym for the kitchen appliance.
• Grinder (noun): Can refer to the meat-grinding appliance, but also to other grinding tools or a type of sandwich.

Synonyms

• (For the appliance): Mincer, food grinder.
• (For the destructive process): Deathtrap, slaughterhouse, crusher, attrition mill.

Related Idioms

• To be ground up in the (X) meat grinder: To be destroyed or consumed by a relentless, damaging process.
  • Many young idealists get ground up in the meat grinder of city politics.

Noun

1. any action resulting in injury or destruction
   • the meat grinder of politics destroyed his reputation
   • allied forces crumbled before the Wehrmacht meat grinder
2. a mill for grinding meat