Genocides

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The deliberate and systematic eradication of a designated population based on their ethnic, national, or religious identity occurs through planned mass violence and oppression
2. This involves coordinated actions of brutal killings or extreme suppression targeting specific groups to achieve total or partial destruction
3. Intentional widespread killing aimed at eliminating an entire ethnic, national, or cultural group

Etymology: Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, coined this term in 1943 or 1944, and he did so deliberately, building it to name a crime he saw as old in practice but new in its modern form. He wrote that the word was made from the ancient Greek "genos" (race, tribe) and the Latin "-cide" (killing), following the pattern of words like "tyrannicide" and "infanticide." The Greek element reaches back through a shared root with the Latin "gens" (tribe, clan), which is also the source of "genus." Lemkin used the word to describe more than one atrocity. He applied it to the Armenian genocide, which at the time was known by several other names, as well as to the massacres of Assyrians and to the Nazi murder of Jews. Its early associations were therefore not confined to a single event, and the term was shaped from the start to cover the destruction of whole peoples. "Genocides" is simply the plural of "genocide," so it refers to multiple such crimes, each one a separate mass killing aimed at an entire group.

Synonyms: mass killings, ethnic cleansing