slaughter vs slay

slaughter

verb
  • To kill someone or something, especially in a particularly brutal manner. 

  • To butcher animals, generally for food. 

  • To massacre people in large numbers. 

noun
  • A rout or decisive defeat. 

  • A mass destruction of non-living things. 

  • The killing of animals, generally for food. 

  • A massacre; the killing of a large number of people. 

  • A group of iguanas. 

slay

verb
  • To kill; to murder. 

  • To defeat; to overcome (in a competition or contest). 

  • To amaze, stun, or otherwise incapacitate by excellence; to excel at something. 

  • To have sex with. 

  • To delight or overwhelm, especially with laughter. 

  • To eradicate or stamp out. 

How often have the words slaughter and slay occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )