Manslaughters

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of unlawfully killing someone without premeditation, often resulting from reckless actions or negligence
2. A serious crime that involves taking another's life without intent to kill, generally categorized as a less severe offense than murder
3. An incident in which a person is killed due to a sudden quarrel or heat of passion, which can lead to legal consequences without the element of murder

Etymology: "Manslaughters" is simply the plural of "manslaughter," so the story belongs to the singular. The noun was built from two Old English elements: "mann," meaning "person" (the source of modern "man" in its older sense of any human being), and "sliht," meaning "killing." Old English "mansliht" thus meant the killing of a person, a sense that covered murder as well as lesser forms of homicide. The sound and spelling shifted through Middle English, where the form "manslaȝter" appeared, and the modern word was often understood as simply "man" plus "slaughter," a reading that nudged its meaning toward the idea of a human being slain. Over time the law split the broad older sense into distinct categories. Murder came to require malice or premeditation, while manslaughter came to name killings committed without those, such as in a sudden quarrel or through gross negligence. That is why the plural form exists at all: each unlawful killing is counted as a separate offence.

Synonyms: homicides, killings, murders