Manslaughter

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈmænˌslɔːtə/

Definitions

1. The unlawful killing of a human being without premeditation or malice aforethought, typically resulting in a less severe penalty than murder
2. The unlawful and unintended act of causing the death of another person without any prior desire to kill
3. The act of causing the death of an individual through unlawful means without intent or premeditation, often resulting in lesser charges than murder

Etymology: Manslaughter is a compound of "man" and "slaughter," but the second part once meant something quite different from its modern sense. In Old English, "slaughter" was not tied to butchering animals; the related Old English word "sliht" simply meant killing. Old English "mansliht" therefore meant "killing of a person," and the same word also carried the sense of murder. The modern legal distinction, where the same act is punished less severely because the killer lacked malice, developed much later as English law sorted homicides into degrees. The term passed into Middle English as "manslaȝter" and "manslauter," and it sits alongside Scots "manslauchter" and Old Frisian "monslaga," which show that the word was shared across the North Sea languages. Its earliest form was a plain description of a deadly act, not a legal category.

Synonyms: homicide, killing, murder, slaying, execution

Antonyms: birth, creation, life, rescue, salvation