House of Misrepresentative

Rhetorical hyperbole is par for the course...

Some of Rachel's discomfort with Grayson's use of the word holocaust comes from way society's use of the word changed.

Originally from the Greek words for burnt whole, modern usage can still encompass a sacrifice consumed by fire -- a burnt offering. But more commonly it's a thorough destruction (especially through fire), or a mass slaughter of people involving extensive loss of life, such as a nuclear holocaust or genocide.

The word holocaust has been used since the 18th century to refer to the violent deaths of a large number of people. For example, Winston Churchill and other contemporaneous writers used it before World War II to describe the Armenian Genocide of World War I.

When capitalized as "The Holocaust," or the Hebrew word "Shoah" is used, the term refers exclusively to the genocide of approximately six million European Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II.

That definition isn't complete, because the Nazis' program of state-sponsored systematic murder extended to ethnic Poles, the Romani (gypsies), Soviet civilians & prisoners of war, people with disabilities, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other political and religious opponents. By this definition, the total of WW II Holocaust victims is believed to be between 11 and 17 million people.