parricide
1
9.9
- noun
- /ˈpærɪˌsaɪd/
- NSFW
- For overvaluing blood relations with fellow humans, we pay the price of family dysfunction: incest, fratricide, and parricide.
Examples
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The children have returned to expel their elders, just as they were once expelled, except that Ru'afo's need for revenge has now escalated into parricide.
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Brombert writes: "Regicide is nothing but an extreme form of parricide" (227).
Academic text (1994) -
"Sir" Humphrey stopped just short of saying, "Never forget, my son," since that would have raised enormous problems in the plot, not least the question of parricide, which, for the moment,
Fiction book (2001) -
Paternal-filial love acts as the appropriate answer to the problem of parricide in civil war just as validly as that of maternal love.
Academic text (1994) -
We hear our bloody cousins are bestowed in England and in Ireland… not confessing their cruel parricide.
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Their masculine counterpart in Quatrevingt-treize takes the form of fire and blood in a somber, destructive, and false paternity that embraces parricide.
Academic text (1994) -
The man was sentenced to life in prison for committing parricide against his mother.
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In ancient Rome, the crime of parricide was considered so heinous that it was met with severe punishment.
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Following the tragic case of parricide, the community was left shocked and saddened by the loss.
Synonyms
1
9.9
An act of killing one's own mother or father
Surface Forms
Morphology
parricide = parri + cide
The word contains the productive suffix -cide, but its initial element is a bound classical form that is not a recognizable English base, so the meaning is not readily predictable.
Etymology
Parricide comes from Latin parts parri- meaning 'parent' and -cide meaning 'to kill', the same -cide you see in suicide and homicide. So, parricide is the act of killing one's own parent.