serial murderer
6
7.3
- noun
- /ˈsɪəriəl ˈmɜrdərər/
- NSFW
:
asesino en serie
- And that's the strongest reason for thinking that the death of Dr. Stefanopolis is not the work of the serial murderer.
Examples
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We're looking for a serial murderer but what could that have to do with a teenager living on an island?
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But the fact remains that even though Erin may not have been one of his victims, there is a serial murderer using these ads to meet young women, and I don't want you to be his next date.
Fiction book (1991) -
'We had the criminal Son of Sam, a serial murderer.
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That would be a nice idea to just go to somebody's house... and knock on their door, but what if a serial murderer lived there?
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Maxine, you have become quite a celebrity outside of the movie business... by taking down a serial murderer of your own.
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He's a really nice guy and all, but I'm pretty sure that he is a serial murderer.
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This is the reality and morality of a serial murderer, who ceaselessly and repeatedly kills innocent human beings and who is proud of what he does.
Blog text (27) -
It's just Ethan and a serial murderer in a house, each hunting the other from the attic down to the basement, and is perhaps the most intense cat-and-mouse segment a game has ever offered.
Blog text (29) -
The police captured a serial murderer who had evaded them for months, targeting his victims in secluded areas.
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After the shocking news of a serial murderer in the neighborhood, residents became more vigilant and organized safety meetings.
Synonyms
232
4.1
A person who kills several people over time, often in the same way
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally built: 'serial' (occurring in sequence/repeated) modifies 'murderer' (someone who kills), so a learner who knows both words can infer it denotes a murderer who kills multiple people over time. This construction is cross-linguistically common (e.g., Spanish 'asesino en serie'), making the meaning readily understandable to B1 learners.
Etymology
Serial murderer comes from the idea of a serial or 'series' of events, meaning things that happen one after another. It gives the image of a person who repeats the same crime one after another, so the phrase means 'a person who kills several people over time'.