Word.ws English Dictionary

filicide

UK/ˈfɪ.lɪ.sʌɪd/

filicide noun: the killing of one's own child.

filicide: the killing of one's own child
Image: Ilya Repin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

filicide (countable and uncountable, plural filicides)

  1. The killing of one's own child.
    • it began by violating nature, and ends in filicide. (I, v)1820, Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer
    • Terms related to familicide include filicide (the killing of one's child or children), uxoricide (the killing of one's wife), fratricide or sororicide (the killing of one's brother or sister), avunculicide (the killing of one's uncle), and nepoticide (the killing of one's nephew).2014, Albert Lee Strickland, “Familicide”, in Michael John Brennan, editor, The A–Z of Death and Dying: Social, Medical, and Cultural Aspects, Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Publishing Group...
  2. A person who kills his or her own child.
    • Ned is running, panicked, […] running for the cold hard road and the sanctuary of the Brunch farm like a filicide caught in the act.1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin Books, published 2006, page 287

filicide meaning in Tamil and Bengali

filicide in Tamil

பெண்கொலை

filicide in Bengali

নিজের সন্তানকে হত্যা করা

Forms of filicide

pluralfilicides

Origin of filicide

From Latin fīlius (“son”), fīlia (“daughter”) + -cide.

Words formed from filicide

Questions about filicide

What does filicide mean?
Filicide means the killing of one's own child.
What is filicide in Tamil?
Filicide in Tamil is பெண்கொலை. See Filicide meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is filicide?
Filicide is a noun.
How do you pronounce filicide?
Filicide is pronounced /ˈfɪ.lɪ.sʌɪd/ (UK).
What is the plural of filicide?
The plural of filicide is filicides.

Words near filicide in the dictionary

  1. filicanes
  2. filicic
  3. filicic acid
  4. filicidal
  5. filicidally
  6. filicide
  7. filicides
  8. filiciform
  9. filicinean
  10. filicinin
  11. filicinoside

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: filicide (page history and authors); filicide (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); filicide (Bengali Wiktionary) (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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Cite this entry: “filicide.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/filicide. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.