Meanings
- rareuncountableThe killing of a chicken.
Verily, I put myself in mind of Gay's sick fox, who, after preaching to his young kin against pullicide, cries, […] A chicken, too, might do me good.
1866, Horace Walpole, “1338. To Sir Horace Mann”, in Peter Cunningham, editor, The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford, volume 5, London: Henry G. Bohn, page 2822 more examples
[…] was also given to "gallicide," "pullicide," and every kind of 'cide, and a good deal of Warre's correspondence is full of apologies for the misdeeds of both dogs.
1922, Charles Robert Leslie FLetcher, Edmond Warre, D.D., C.B., C.V.O., Sometime Headmaster and Provost of Eton College, J. Murray, page 223In one of the more broadly comic touches, for example, Cicero illustrates the Stoic claim that all crimes are equal by equating parricide with untimely pullicide: "And the man who strangles a poultry-cock when it is not necessary does no less wrong than the man who strangles his father"
2011, David C. Urban, “The Use of Exempla from Cicero to Pliny the Younger”, in Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations, University of Pennsylvania, page 125Synonyms: gallicide
Synonyms & antonyms
nounThe killing of a chicken.
Origin
Cite this entry
pullicide. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pullicide
“pullicide.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pullicide. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “pullicide,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pullicide.
Source: pullicide on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.