Genocidaire

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who takes part in the deliberate mass killing of an entire national, ethnic, or racial group
2. Someone who carries out or organizes the systematic extermination of a whole people because of their identity
3. An individual responsible for planning or perpetrating the destruction of a population group on ethnic or racial grounds

Etymology: The most striking thing about "genocidaire" is that it was built from a word coined only a few years earlier, and it arrived in English by way of French. The Greek "genos," meaning race or kind, combined with the Latin "-cida," from "caedere," to kill, gave English "genocide," and French then added its agent suffix "-aire" to make "génocidaire," meaning a person who carries out genocide. English borrowed that French noun directly. The French suffix "-aire" descends from Latin "-arius," a suffix marking a person connected with or performing an action, so the word follows the familiar pattern of nouns like "millionaire" and "commissionaire." The English word is therefore a borrowing rather than an independent English formation, and it is the person-noun counterpart of "genocide" itself.

Synonyms: mass murderer, killer, exterminator