What is the difference between “doing something” and “the doing of something”?

[shuko]

I looked up the meaning of slaughter in a dictionary.
It says the meaning of it is the killing of animals for their meat.
I had a question about the difference between the killing of animals and killing animals

 

[probus]

Hello @shuko and welcome to the forum. Please note that I have edited your thread title. As we are an English language site we use only correct English here. Abbreviations like sth for something and other chatlish terms are not used here.

As to your question I can see no difference between "killing animals" and "the killing of animals". One might say that the first is less formal and the second is better in more formal usage, but for purposes of a dictionary definition they are equivalent.

 

[emsr2d2]

I looked up the meaning of "slaughter" in a dictionary. It says the meaning of it is "the killing of animals for their meat".
I had a question about What is the difference between "the killing of animals" and "killing animals"?

They mean the same but "the killing of animals" makes it sound more like a process. The final two words are a bit misleading. Using "their meat" makes it sound as if the animals inherently have meat. They don't. They have a body, made up of skin, flesh, muscles, organs (the same as humans). It's humans who consider animals to consist of meat. It should say "the killing of animals for meat".

Which dictionary was that definition taken from? It's important to quote your source.