physician-assisted suicide
5
7.0
- noun
- /fɪˈzɪʃən əˈsɪstɪd ˈsuːɪsaɪd/
- Formal
:
suicidio asistido por un médico
- The doctor explained that physician-assisted suicide allows terminally ill patients to end their suffering with dignity.
- legalize physician-assisted suicide
- physician-assisted suicide law
- issue of physician-assisted suicide
Examples
-
The Oregon statute has already helped frame much of the national debate on physician-assisted suicide.
Academic text (1997) -
There is every reason to believe that once legal, U.S. practice of physician-assisted suicide would evolve similarly.
Academic text (1997) -
The U.S. Supreme Court has left the issue of physician-assisted suicide up to the states.
Academic text (1997) -
The technical aspects of physician-assisted suicide appear to be relatively simple.
Academic text (2000) -
Because it would break the law, managers at present cannot ethically allow physician-assisted suicide in their facilities.
Academic text (1997) -
Given the evolution of physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands, this last explanation has significant merit.
Academic text (2000) -
Statistics from states where the issue of physician-assisted suicide has been prominent are instructive.
Academic text (2000) -
As for modern-day medicine, the American Medical Association has stood firmly against physician-assisted suicide.
Academic text (1996) -
Polls suggest that more than half the public, as well as many doctors, favor legalizing physician-assisted suicide.
Academic text (1997) -
At the same time, the Court did not foreclose legalization of physician-assisted suicide as a matter of state law.
Academic text (1997)
Synonyms
10
6.7
An act of ending a seriously ill person's life with help from another person to stop suffering
2
8.1
An act of causing your own death on purpose
1
6.5
To end your own life on purpose
Surface Forms
Morphology
physician-assisted + suicide
The meaning is directly compositional: 'suicide' = deliberate self‑killing and 'physician-assisted' decomposes into 'physician' (doctor) + 'assisted' (helped), so together they denote suicide carried out with a doctor's help. This agent+action construction is transparent and mirrors similar formations in other languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents can infer the meaning.
Etymology
Physician-assisted suicide comes from its parts: a physician is a doctor, assisted means helped, and suicide means 'ending one's own life'. Imagine a doctor giving medicine to a very sick person to help them die, so the phrase means 'ending one's life with a doctor's help'.