Parricida

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who commits the act of killing their own parent or close ancestor; an individual found guilty of patricide or matricide; one who engages in the act of taking the life of a familial progenitor
2. An individual responsible for the murder of a parent or a direct ancestor; someone charged with the severe crime of killing their mother or father; a person who has committed an act of violence against a family member of such close kinship
3. A person who has unlawfully slain a father or mother; one labeled a criminal for the act of killing a parent; a person guilty of the grave offense of taking the life of a progenitor

Etymology: Roman law used "parricida" for the killing of a close relative, and it began as a compound of two Latin elements. The second, "-cida," comes from "caedere," "to cut down" or "to kill," the same root behind "homicide" and "suicide." The first element, "parri-," is much less certain. Its exact source is unclear, and it may be connected to "pater," "father," though this is a reconstruction rather than a documented fact. Roman writers were not sure of the word's original scope. Some ancient commentators thought the crime was once defined more broadly, covering the killing of any free person, and the older sense is hard to recover with confidence. By the classical period, the term was applied to the killing of parents and other close kin, which is why the English meaning remains tied to family murder. English took the word through French "parricide," which carried it into the language as a learned borrowing. The word's meaning has stayed close to its Roman legal sense, a rare case of a technical term keeping its original focus.

Synonyms: parricide, killer, murderer, filicide