# equicide
## English
### Etymology

From Latin equus +‎ -icide.

### Pronunciation

* Audio (UK):(file)

### Noun

equicide (countable and uncountable, plural equicides)
* The killing of a horse.
** 1852 July, R. M. Richardson, “Men, Manners, and Mountains. Mounting the Righi, in Three Heats.”, in Sartain’s Magazine, volume XI, number 1, page 23, column 1:Before him lay extended the brown body of a donkey, whose broken lariot and fixed eye told the tale. I thought for a moment that its hoof was moving; but before a word had passed, all was still. […] / “Messieurs, it was not my fault. I told them at Weggis the animal was too small; but they forced him on me, saying that he was a convenient size. My legs touched ground. They said I should escape a fall. The donkey was hungry and emulous. I had no guide to restrain him; but I did not urge him. He weakened as he warmed. He drank of the cold rills. He brayed aloud. He passed the châlet with a snort;—he snorted out his breath. Ah, Messieurs! it is all over with him and me. How shall I get down to-morrow with a gout and no donkey? This air is sharpening it into rheumatism,” swore he with a German oath, as, resting on one leg, he / “Steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead, / And bitterly thought of the morrow.” / “Rank equicide!” growled the Scot. “Puir mewel!” / By this time, the entire procession was gathered round the deceased.
** 1857 August 8, Memphis Daily Appeal, Memphis, Tenn., page 2:The idea of making beef out of that noble animal, for which every man of heart entertains an affection only second to that which binds him to his own race—the animal which approaches nearer than any other of the four-footed creation to man, in the nobler traits of soul and character—could only emanate from bipeds of the Greeley species. There should be a law passed for such sneaks, against killing the horse to eat, unless it be a broken-legged or used-up animal, which would be relieved by death, and that would be pretty good diet for such creatures. The offense of equicide must be defied and provided for by our next Legislature, or the Greeleyites will be getting up a horse-eating phalanx and party.
** 1888, H. S. Foote, editor, Pen Pictures from the Garden of the World—or—Santa Clara County, California. […], Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, page 53, column 1:There was a large band of wild horses belonging to Captain Sutter, which were ranging in the foot-hills on that side of the river where the emigrants’ camp was located. The question of killing one of these had been seriously discussed. The proposition had been earnestly opposed by Martin Murphy, who had declared that it was not food fit for human beings, and that although in the last stages of starvation his stomach would revolt at such diet. The respect that the young men had for Mr. Murphy restrained them from committing equicide for some time. But at last it became a question of horse meat or starvation.
** 1950 October 4, Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., page 25:“Murder Makes the Mare Co,” by Jack Oolph, deals with horse-loving Doc connor who dredges Into the lives of his Broadway clientele to learn the answer to an equicide and the murders preceding the death of a promising mare.
** 1951, George Sessions Perry, Tale of a Foolish Farmer, McGraw-Hill Book Company, page 33:But had Mary shot Pond Pen, the things that alleged race horse had done to her would certainly have caused any fair judge to pronounce Pond Pen’s violent passing justifiable equicide.
** c. 1951, T. J. Kerttula, D. L. McDonald, “Hoss Murder”, in American Cattle Producer, page 11, column 1:For, as soon as the serious matters of “settin’ them up” had been attended to, the first court trial in the history of the Territory—“for wilful and malicious equicide”—would get under way.
** 1973, Francis M. Nevins, Jr., Royal Bloodline; Ellery Queen, Author and Detective, Bowling Green University Popular Press, →ISBN, page 67:The final four stories in New Adventures were conceived and written as a series. In each of them Ellery [Queen] solves a crime—homicide, attempted equicide, jewel theft—that is connected with a major sporting event.
** 1976, Thames Poetry, page 22:[…] second wife suddenly rudely raped by a centaur […] shot the horrid horseman it was excusable equicide […] harmless homicide!
** 1980, Jeffrey Campbell, The Homing, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, page 83:Kenner walked over to the motel office, and that was like a replay of yesterday, with Bertha behind her desk reading The Chilton Republic, Sunday edition. dead horse found in river had squeezed the mayor from the front page. Another job for Chilton’s finest, Kenner thought. The Equicide Squad.
** 1995, Felice Picano, Dryland’s End, New York, N.Y.: Masquerade Books, →ISBN, page 224:“Let’s hope.” Mart said. / “Hoping is for pupae, Mart. Warriors make and act. Sounds like Equicide time to me.” / Mart faced her calmness. “You mean kill the Centaurs?” / “All you can find. […]”
** 1997 November 30, Rutland Daily Herald, Rutland, Vt., page 103:Although small in stature, the Barb hosts a heart that is 50 percent than larger than a horse two hands taller. There is more oxygen in their bodies, so they can go longer, Fusco explains. They can go 100 miles and be fresh the next day. Ultimately, the ponies paid a price for their size and endurance – when government troops managed to catch up with them, they systematically destroyed the sturdy steeds. General Custer ordered the slaughter of 850 head, until his men were literally sickened by the sound of the screams. Fourteen hundred died at the hand of like-minded General McKenzie “so the Indians wouldn’t get hold of them,” Fusco says. / Biologically speaking, it was a fairly successful equicide. Less than a year ago, the breed was considered extinct, the bloodlines thoroughly compromised.
** 1998, Anne Rivers Siddons, Low Country, HarperCollins Publishers, →ISBN, page 505:“Why did you fire Hayes?” I said finally. / “Suspicion of equicide,” my husband said, and began to laugh. I did, too.
** 1999, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, volume 84, Gale Research, →ISBN, page 152, columns 1–2:The redoubtable Mother launches a two-pronged strategy: Kule is to assume the guilt for the equicide—or rather the disappearance of the horse, for of course she makes no explicit confession; the Son is to regress to being a small boy.
** 2003, D.F. Lewis, “The Stories of Murkales: Twenty Zodiacal Tales”, in Weirdmonger: The Nemonicon: Synchronised Shards of Random Truth & Fiction: […], Canton, Oh.: Prime Books, →ISBN, section “Event at Al Mugamra”, page 268:Vega and Lyra saw their loved one akimbo by the fire, and unheeding the screams of the cindering horse-master and the screeching equicide of the roasting war-horses, they rushed to myself, the crouching centaur, and planted kisses on every part of my body.
** 2010, “Equine Advocates: A Haven for Those Who Need it Most”, in Equicurean: The Horses, The People, The Lifestyle, Chad Beatty: Saratoga Publishing, page 49:Ms. [Bo] Derek is admired for her assertive campaign to end the madness of equicide, a campaign that she will not cease until slaughter is no longer in the legal lexicon in the United States and Canada.
** 2012, Hilary Bradt, chapter 6, in Connemara Mollie: An Irish Journey on Horseback, Bradt Travel Guides, →ISBN, page 48:“Come on Mollie, good girl!” I said in gentle horse-loving tones as I walked towards her with equicide in my heart.
** 2013 February 13, “LOLCOL”, in BMA Magazine: Canberra’s Entertainment Guide, number 411, Scott Layne, Allan Sko: Radar Media, page 32:‘Quickly, to the library – and don’t spare the horses!’ A request often made in a one-horse town. Adhering to it will functionally eliminate 100% of the horses in that town, which is practically equicide. I call it practequicide.
** 2015, Adrienne A. Gavin, “‘I saw a great deal of trouble amongst the horses in London’: Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty and the Victorian Cab Horse”, in Adrienne A. Gavin, Andrew F. Humphries, editors, Transport in British Fiction: Technologies of Movement, 1840–1940, part I, “Transport in Early and Mid-Victorian Fiction, 1840–1880”, Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN:Black Beauty’s voice makes felt the impact of London on horses and makes specific London’s culpability for equicide, both attempted and achieved.
** 2017 August 2, George Prentice, “To Die For: In Lady Macbeth, revenge (and just about everything else) is served cold”, in Boise Weekly, volume 26, number 7, Sally Freeman, page 20:Katherine [Lester (a character in Lady Macbeth)] is no innocent. Her taste for evil is in her DNA, and her twists of the screw (literally and figuratively) tighten her resolve to control her destiny, no matter the consequence. In short order, we witness homicide, infanticide and even equicide.
* One who or that which kills a horse.
** 1840 June, Dragsman, “Another Chapter on Driving”, in The Sportsman (Second Series), volume II, number VI, London: […] the Office, […], page 407:Fathers of families with corpulent wives and a numerous progeny, never heed the torture they impose upon the unhappy animal but they one and all crowd into the feeaton with a turn over seat and drive away with their families to Clapton, Hackney, Turnham Green or Bow—in short wherever their country box may be situated. That diminutive quadruped, the pony, too, is enlisted in the barbarous cause, and is made, now-a-days, to do the duty of a dray-horse: it is really monstrous to see the work they are called upon to perform. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should look to this. The heartless drivers of these “equicides,” or horse-killing carriages know little and care less about rotatory motion,—they are not aware that the smaller a wheel is in circumference the heavier is the draft. The ladies, poor souls, imagine that because the wheels are small, the carriage must be light;
** 1853 March 7, The Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, page 3:About seventy equicides assembled at the fixture specified in the card of “The Meets,” that is to say, The Black Bull, on a foggy, splashy, mnddy, fishing, Scotch misty, egg flip-drinking day.
** 1894 May 25, “Exchange Notes”, in The Springfield Leader, number 46, Springfield, Mo., page 2, column 3:One Mr. Shrock, who was pursuing the Taylor brothers, managed to shoot his own horse, through and through. The crowd made the equicide stand by the dead beast and be photographed.

#### Derived terms

* equicidal