Meat sold by butchers (beef, mutton, veal or lamb) as distinguished from poultry, game, fish, etc.
1632. Massinger, City Madam, I. i. I fear it will spent in poultry: Butcher’s meat will not go down.
1769. Burke, Pres. St. Nat., Wks. II. 88. Corn, hay, meal, butchers-meat, fish, fowls, every thing [is excised].
1799. J. Robertson, Agric. Perth, 322. Butcher meat of all kinds has risen in the same proportion.
1846. McCulloch, Acc. Brit. Empire (1854), II. 515. The consumption of butchers’ meat in the metropolis.
1862. R. Patterson, Ess. Hist. & Art, 302. No people … consume so little butcher-meat as the Chinese.
