Patricida

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of killing one's father, typically reflecting a grave familial betrayal
2. A term denoting the murder of one's own father, often examined in discussions of morality and sociology
3. Referring to the deliberate act of patricide, highlighting the extreme breach of kinship obligations

Etymology: The Romans punished the killing of a parent with an unusually grim ritual. According to Cicero, a convicted parricide was sewn into a leather sack along with a dog, a rooster, a viper, and sometimes a monkey, then thrown into the sea or a river. The punishment, called "poena cullei," was meant to deny the killer a normal death and a burial on land. The Latin term was "parricida," and its first element is uncertain. Its origin is obscure, and Roman writers themselves often read it as "pater" (father) plus "caedere" (to kill). That folk reading shaped the later spelling "patricida," which kept the father-based association and passed into the Romance languages. The second element, "-cida," comes from the same Latin verb that gives English "-cide" in words like "homicide." English "patricide" is the same word in its modern form, built on that Latin root. It is one of many learned terms that English took directly from Latin, often through scholarly writing, rather than through everyday speech.

Synonyms: patricide