say it: HAH-luh-kawst
holocaust is a noun meaning "an act of mass destruction and loss of life (especially in war or by fire)". It carries 2 recorded senses.
an act of mass destruction and loss of life (especially in war or by fire)
“a nuclear holocaust”
the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime from 1941 until 1945
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for holocaust come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.