HOLOCAUST, strictly a sacrifice wholly destroyed by fire. The word appears in Greek only in the Septuagint (Lev. 6. 23, in the form oX6KavTOV "the wholly-burnt thing"). Such are the sacri fices of the Jews, described in the Pentateuch as "whole burnt of ferings" (see SACRIFICE). The term is now often loosely applied to a catastrophe on a large scale, whether by fire or not, or to a massacre or slaughter.