suicide
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈs(j)uːɪˌsaɪd/
ipa: /ˈsuɪˌsaɪd/
ipa: /ˌsuːɪˈsaɪd/
ipa: /ˈswisaɪd/
note: Indic
ipa: /s(j)u.sajɖ/
note: Indic
ipa: /s(j)ʊwɪˈsajɖ/
rhymes: -uːɪsaɪd
Forms: form: suicides
form: suiciding
form: suicided
form: suicided
Etymology: First attested in Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (1643) in sense 1, ostensibly from New Latin suīcīdium, from suī (genitive reflexive pronoun) + -cīdium (“act of killing or murder”), but often believed to have originated in English before entering Latin. Displaced native Middle English seolf-cwale from Old English selfcwalu (literally “self-slaughter”), after which suicide may have been modelled, or calqued (compare manuscript). Sense 3 is perhaps by analogy with words like homicide, patricide (see -cide), or, although unlikely, from Medieval Latin suīcīda; see the Etymology section at suīcīdium.
Senses: examples: text: "Her husband suicided three years ago. Just like a man!"
ref: 1917, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 11, in Anne's House of Dreams:
text: Seems a lady poet suicided at Verringer's ranch in Sepulveda canyon one time.
ref: 1953, Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, Penguin, published 2010, page 136:
synonyms: word: an hero
word: catch the bus
word: commit hara-kiri
word: commit seppuku
word: commit sudoku
word: end one's life
word: kill oneself
word: off oneself
word: rope
word: ropemaxx
word: self-delete
word: self-kill
word: suicide
word: take one's own life
word: top oneself
glosses: To intentionally kill oneself.
examples: text: Have bought The Shanghai Chopsticks. Proprietor at first refused to sell, but when I ordered the boiling oil he became more reasonable. Editor reports that circulation is not what it ought to be. […] Will publish proclaimation, "Any person found not in possession of The Shanghai Chopsticks (current number) will be suicided."
ref: 1898 October 29, Punch, or the London charivari, page 196:
text: Even if he did get charged, he would be suicided long before he could involve one of the city's most important politicians in the scam.
ref: 2011, Tobias Jones, White Death, →ISBN, page 273:
text: Gelli also expressed skepticism about Calvi's ability to climb out over the scaffolding in his leather-soled city shoes. 'I think they suicided him.
ref: 2013 September 23, Philip Willan, The Vatican at War: From Blackfriars Bridge to Buenos Aires, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 257:
glosses: To kill (someone) and make their death appear to have been a suicide rather than a homicide (now especially as part of a conspiracy).
examples: text: At the conclusion of each wind, the movement of the driver's control lever back to the neutral position, and consequently the movement of the Ward Leonard controller back to its neutral position, firstly opens the directional contacts which isolate the generator field from the Ward Leonard exciter and, secondly, operates contactors which eliminate the effect of the residual field by suiciding the generator field as outlined above.
ref: 1957, The Institute of Mineral Industries, Proceedings - Issues 181-182, page 315:
text: The problem is that the degradation of our common space requires a complete social transformation, because it's a part of Galician society's general degradation, a society demographically declining — demographically suiciding, as it were — with inactive employers and intellectual elites comfortably disconnected from real life;
ref: 2006, Ugliness?: Destroying a Country, →ISBN:
text: Here in America we just called them survivors, after the Chinese suicided their psychotic society in the seventies, and destroyed most of urban America in the process.
ref: 2010, Martin H. Greenberg, The End of the World: Stories of the Apocalypse, →ISBN, page 189:
glosses: To self-destruct.
Related terms: hara-kiri
kamikaze
seppuku