Word.ws English Dictionary

malicide

malicide noun: the killing of a heretic, especially in reference to Christianity's dogmatic witch-hunts.

Noun

malicide (countable and uncountable, plural malicides)

  1. (historical) The killing of a heretic, especially in reference to Christianity's dogmatic witch-hunts.
    • In fact, by the eleventh century, a term was invented for killing non-Christians, since this was not to be considered homicide. It was malicide, Latin for the killing of a bad person.2008, Mark Kurlansky, Nonviolence. The History of a Dangerous Idea. Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, page 33

Forms of malicide

pluralmalicides

Questions about malicide

What does malicide mean?
Malicide means the killing of a heretic, especially in reference to Christianity's dogmatic witch-hunts.
What part of speech is malicide?
Malicide is a noun.
What is the plural of malicide?
The plural of malicide is malicides.

Words near malicide in the dictionary

  1. malice prepense
  2. maliced
  3. maliceful
  4. maliceless
  5. malices
  6. malicide
  7. malicides
  8. malicing
  9. malicious
  10. malicious compliance
  11. malicious mischief

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: malicide (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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