ursicidal

The facts, so far as we can gather, are that a noisy party of wild animals, including brown and white bears, arrived at the Hippodrome; that the process of “letting in the jungle” was accomplished by persuading them to walk down what is described as a “rake” into the cellarage of the building; and that a fine brown bear went mad during the proceedings. […] It greatly disturbed the mental balance of the brown bear. Ursicidal mania was his complaint; so at least the white bear was led to believe when his coloured friend suddenly opened an attack on him.

1901 March 8, “Notes and News”, in The Daily News, London, →OCLC, page 4, column 7

Senator [Francis E.] Warren of Wyoming says there are 40,000 bears in his state.—Kennebec Journal. These 40,000 bears doubtless are the property of the State of Wyoming. The State of Wyoming is therefore palpably engaged in maintaining a Bear Trust. President [Theodore] Roosevelt, if we accept public rumor, is afflicted with the ursicidal and trust slaying habit. Why then does not Senator Warren extend to President Roosevelt an invitation to a bear hunt in his state, and so to speak, give him the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

1902 December 25, J. K. Blackman, editor, The Greenville Daily News, Greenville, S.C.: Williams & Richardson, →OCLC, page [4], column 2

[Johann Friedrich] Rochlitz’s second contribution to the mythmaking process was to endow Beethoven’s brusque mannerisms with a bruin simile destined forever to fix in the public mind an image of Beethoven as lovable, almost pattable, bear: “[…] I might say that the dark, unlicked bear seems so ingenuous and confiding, growls and shakes his shaggy pelt so harmlessly and grotesquely, that it is a pleasure, and one has to be kind to him, even though he were nothing but a bear in fact and had done no more than a bear’s best.” We might now feel inclined to add our voices in ursicidal unanimity to [Anton] Schindler’s outburst: “And Rochlitz was to have been Beethoven’s biographer?!”

1987, Alessandra Comini, “[Ludwig van] Beethoven Dead: Shaping the Posthumous Portrait”, in The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking, New York, N.Y.: Rizzoli, →ISBN, page 104