Humanicide

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The deliberate act of causing widespread death among humans is a critical concept
2. It refers to the intentional elimination or extermination of human lives through violence
3. The act of intentionally causing the death of a large number of people

Etymology: "Humanicide" is a plain compound: "human" joined to the suffix "-icide," which comes from Latin "-cida," the form of "caedere," meaning "to cut down" or "to kill." The same suffix gives us "homicide," "suicide," and "genocide," and the pattern is simple: attach it to whatever is being killed. A "humanicide" is therefore the killing of humans, a word built on the model of those older terms. The suffix shows its age in the way it was assembled. Most English words ending in "-cide" were formed from Latin or Greek roots, but "human" is an English-attached element, so the coinage combines classical and modern parts. The word is best understood as a deliberate formation rather than an inherited term, and its meaning follows directly from its parts: the killing of humankind as a whole, not of a single person.