Meanings
plural familicides
- 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.
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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 - countableuncountableThe perpetrator of a familicide.
The popular professional wrestler became the most notorious familicide of 2007.
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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 10While 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 147His 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
familicide. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/familicide
“familicide.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/familicide. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “familicide,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/familicide.
Source: familicide on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.