Word.ws English Dictionary

cygnicide

/ˈsɪɡnɪsaɪd/

cygnicide noun: the killing of a swan.

Noun

cygnicide (uncountable)

  1. (rare) The killing of a swan.
    • [A]s my eye wandered carelessly across the face of the water, it was electrified by the sight of a splendid black swan, (the only one I had ever seen wild,) sailing out of the rushes on the margin of the lagoon, about fifty yards from my station. […] Perhaps I might as well have galloped at once...[1852, Godfrey Charles Mundy, “Excursion to Illawarra, or The Five Islands”, in Our Antipodes: or, Residence and Rambles in the Australasian Colonies. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […]...
    • The same reluctance to kill, or when killed to eat a swan, prevails in parts, if not in the whole of Connacht. I knew one man who shot a swan, and his father would not allow it to be eaten. Another man assured me he had once shot one, and if he lived for a thousand years he never would do so again....1895, Douglas Hyde, “Notes”, in The Three Sorrows of Story-telling and Ballads of St. Columkille, London: T. Fisher Unwin, […], page 155

Examples of cygnicide in a sentence

  • Donne died after composing those best lines of his: but little he thought of the temptation to cygnicide involved therein for future generations.1898, E. Kay Robinson, “Our Swans”, in Donald Macleod, editor, Good Words, London: Isbister and Company Limited, […], page 811, column 1:
  • A prowling coyote was suspected of the cygnicide and a trap was set for him, the carcass of the swan, filled with poison, being set in the snare.1901 June 28, “Coyote Kills Black Swan. Visits Scene of His Crime and Meets Deserved Death.”, in The Examiner, volume LXXII, number 179...

Origin of cygnicide

From Latin cygnus + -icide.

Questions about cygnicide

What does cygnicide mean?
Cygnicide means the killing of a swan.
How do you use cygnicide in a sentence?
Donne died after composing those best lines of his: but little he thought of the temptation to cygnicide involved therein for future generations.
What part of speech is cygnicide?
Cygnicide is a noun.
How do you pronounce cygnicide?
Cygnicide is pronounced /ˈsɪɡnɪsaɪd/.

Words near cygnicide in the dictionary

  1. cyflumetofen
  2. cyfluthrin
  3. cygneous
  4. cygnet
  5. cygnets
  6. cygnicide
  7. Cygnid
  8. Cygnids
  9. cygnine
  10. Cygnus
  11. Cygnus X-1

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cygnicide (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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