Dictionary

familicide en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (US) audio

Etymology

From family + -cide.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) The murder of an entire family by a family member.
   • Familicide is the murder of family members by another family member. In other words, familicide is a multiple-victim homicide in which the killer's spouse or partner and one or more children are killed. Although familicide is relatively rare, it is nevertheless the most common form of mass killing. 2014, Albert Lee Strickland, “Familicide”, in Michael John Brennan, editor, The A–Z of Death and Dying: Social, Medical, and Cultural Aspects, Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 204:
   • Because of the familicide that wiped out his entire family, he will be charged with six counts of murder.
2. (countable, uncountable) The perpetrator of a familicide.
   • The popular professional wrestler became the most notorious familicide of 2007.
   • His behaviour in Ukraine increasingly resembles that of a familicide, who would rather kill his wife and children than let them go. 2022 March 30, Joan Smith, “Putin the abuser”, in The Critic:
   • There has also been some recent work focused on diagnostic correlates in aggressive individuals, including a familicide. 1998, American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Newsletter, volume 23, number 3, page 10:
   • While hiding there under the assumed name Calinda, she nearly falls prey to duke Brianto, a stock character modeled on the salacious predatory Turk (a ‘familicide’ of “beastly appetite,” in league with a dishonest Greek ally) […] 2019, Lea Puljcan Juric, Illyria in Shakespeare’s England, →ISBN, page 147:

Forms

Deriveds

familicidal

Relateds

infanticide · homicide · uxoricide · family annihilator · parricide · sororicide · altruistic filicide · fratricide · suicide