Electrocutions

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of causing death or serious injury to an individual by delivering an electric shock
2. the resulting consequence of failing electrical safety measures leading to fatal outcomes
3. an incident where someone is killed or harmed due to unintended contact with electricity

Etymology: "Electrocutions" is the plural of "electrocution", so it refers to deaths caused by electric shock. The base word was coined in the United States around 1888, when New York State began executing condemned prisoners with the electric chair. It was built as a blend of "electro-" and "execution", so the new method of killing carried its own name from the start. The coinage is a clear example of how a technology gave rise to a word for a specific event. The first half points to electricity, while the second half borrows the legal sense of "execution" as the formal, state-sanctioned killing of a convict. Because the word was made to name a judicial procedure, it was tied to the electric chair long before it came to describe accidental electrocution. Its later sense, meaning a death by electric current in any setting, grew out of that original use. The plural form simply counts individual cases of such deaths.