familicide

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noun

The murder of an entire family by a family member.

“The popular professional wrestler became the most notorious familicide of 2007.”

Scrabble 18

Meanings

nounfamilicide (countable and uncountable, plural familicides)

plural familicides

  1. countableuncountableThe murder of an entire family by a family member.

    Because of the familicide that wiped out his entire family, he will be charged with six counts of murder.

    1 more example

    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
  2. countableuncountableThe perpetrator of a familicide.

    The popular professional wrestler became the most notorious familicide of 2007.

    3 more examples

    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

    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

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

familicide. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/familicide

MLA

“familicide.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/familicide. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “familicide,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/familicide.

Source: familicide on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.