Word.ws English Dictionary

clinicide

Syllables: cli·ni·cide/ˈklɪnɪsaɪd//ˈklɪnɪˌsaɪd/

clinicide noun: the deliberate killing of a patient in the course of medical treatment.

Noun

clinicide (countable and uncountable, plural clinicides)

  1. The deliberate killing of a patient in the course of medical treatment.
    • [page 90, column 1] [Harold] Shipman killed himself in Wakefield prison on 13 January 2004. The Coronial hearing brought to an end a series of inquiries that found he had committed at least 250 murders in a killing career – a clinicide – that went back to internship at Pontefract General Infirmary....2006 March, Robert [M.] Kaplan, “Harold Shipman: An Awful Sod: Review of Clarkson W., Evil beyond Belief”, in Gary Walter, editor, Australasian Psychiatry, volume 14, number 1, [Thousand Oaks...
    • Clinicide is the unnatural death of multiple patients in the course of treatment by a doctor. Clinicide occurs in a group that has a high rate of homicide. [H. G.] Kinnell maintains that doctors kill more than any other group (veterinarians, apparently, have never produced a serial killer).2007 August, Robert [M.] Kaplan, “The Clinicide Phenomenon: An Exploration of Medical Murder”, in Gary Walter, editor, Australasian Psychiatry, volume 15, number 4, [Thousand Oaks, Calif.]: SAGE...

Examples of clinicide in a sentence

  • The analogies between poisoning patients, forging a will to announce the end of the clinicides and finally, death by hanging seem uncannily close.2009, Robert M. Kaplan, “Searching for Shipman”, in Medical Murder: Disturbing Cases of Doctors Who Kill, [Sydney, N.S.W.]: Read How You...
  • Clinicide can also be detected by the substantiation of injurious, unnecessary, and potentially lethal medical procedures or treatment.2010, Joshua A. Perper, Stephen J. Cina, “To Catch a Killer: Investigating Serial Murders”, in When Doctors Kill: Who, Why, and How, New...

Forms of clinicide

pluralclinicides

Origin of clinicide

From clini(cal) (“dealing with the practical management of patients”) + -cide (suffix meaning ‘killing’).

Words formed from clinicide

Questions about clinicide

What does clinicide mean?
Clinicide means the deliberate killing of a patient in the course of medical treatment.
How do you use clinicide in a sentence?
The analogies between poisoning patients, forging a will to announce the end of the clinicides and finally, death by hanging seem uncannily close.
What part of speech is clinicide?
Clinicide is a noun.
How do you pronounce clinicide?
Clinicide is pronounced /ˈklɪnɪsaɪd/ (UK).
What is the plural of clinicide?
The plural of clinicide is clinicides.

Words near clinicide in the dictionary

  1. clinically depressed
  2. clinicals
  3. clinician
  4. clinicians
  5. clinicidal
  6. clinicide
  7. clinicides
  8. clinico-
  9. clinico-pathological
  10. clinicoanatomical
  11. clinicobacteriological

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clinicide (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860_(eng)-I learned some phrases-clinicide.wav, En-us-clinicide.mp3.

Cite this entry: “clinicide.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/clinicide. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.