# equicidal
## English
### Etymology

From equicide +‎ -al.

### Adjective

equicidal (comparative more equicidal, superlative most equicidal)
* (rare) Of or pertaining to equicide.
** 1934, The Catholic World, page 197, column 1:The equicidal bull was finished in due course like his fellows, and at length but one remained, a brave, tough youngster that played the game vigorously, but yet without great malice, and to lamentably futile purpose.
** 1976, Animal Health: Programs and Trends in the Americas, 1976, page 81, column 1:This equicidal virus, which causes equine and human outbreaks, also has clinical characteristics which distinguish it from the sylvatic type.
** 1981, Bennett M. Berger, “Appendix: Ethnographic Methods”, in The Survival of a Counterculture: Ideological Work and Everyday Life Among Rural Communards, University of California Press, page 223:In his enormously affecting play Equus, Peter Shaffer uses horses as a Christ symbol and the “sharp chains” in the horses’ mouths as a metaphor for Christ’s agonies. Much of the dramatic impact of the play is projected by Shaffer’s psychiatrist-protagonist who is tormented by the feeling that, by relieving the equicidal obsession of his seriously disturbed adolescent patient, he is destroying the boy’s deepest passions, his capacity “to worship,” as the psychiatrist puts it.
** 1994, Tom Ivers, The Fit Racehorse II, →ISBN, page 278:It’s just that extremely few trainers and riders will consider it anything less than equicidal.
** 1998, English Journal, page 99:Macbeth: I wish your horses swift and sure of foot, / And so do I commend you to their backs. / Farewell. (I think I’ll kill their horses, too.) / […] I was not at all bothered by Macbeth’s interruption in the middle of his second speech, Banquo’s long comment on his short last speech, or the equicidal joke that concludes the scene.
** 2002, John Walsh, “Stolen Beauty”, in James O’Reilly, Tara Austen Weaver, editors, Tuscany: True Stories, San Francisco, Calif.: Travelers’ Tales, →ISBN, page 191:You could point at the high incidence of Renaissance paintings, plaster saints, zucchini, frescoes, nuns, tricolor pasta, Day-Glo cyclists, olive trees, leaning towers, old women, equicidal horse races, two-lane motorways, bridges, dogs, geranium mini-gardens, Madonnas and Davids, baptisteries, and tiramisu ice cream—and much of this would be true.
** 2013, Mark Lunney, Ken Oliphant, “General Introduction”, in Tort Law: Text and Materials, 5th edition, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 5:Throughout the first part of the fourteenth century there are examples of actions against blacksmiths for killing horses vi et armis and contra pacem but it seems more likely these are actions for carelessness in shoeing the horse rather than that they indicate a group of equicidal tradesmen.
** 2021, Wendy Doniger, “Horses in Indian Nature and Culture”, in Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares: Horses in Indian Myth and History, University of Virginia Press, →ISBN, →LCCN:Worse still, mares tend to be testy and capricious even (or, indeed, sometimes especially) when in heat, and their unfortunate tendency to kick the stallions who try to mount them often inflicts permanent damage or impotence. The equicidal tendency of such mares would dampen the enthusiasm of the most passionate stud, making such an unfortunate stallion what breeders call a “dud stud.”