Word.ws English Dictionary

matricide

matricide noun: the killing of one's mother.

Noun

matricide (countable and uncountable, plural matricides)

  1. The killing of one's mother.
    • Gerald was imprisoned for matricide: he strangled his mother.
    • Here the interest was the more compelling because the case of Orestes was unique—not only because matricide was an almost unknown crime, but also because the gods themselves participate in an action in which the slain mother had herself slain the father of her son.1924, Herbert Weir Smyth, “VIII. Orestea. III: Eumenides”, in Aeschylean Tragedy, page 223
  2. A person who kills his or her mother.
    • Nancy was a matricide; it happened four years ago.

matricide meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

matricide in Hindi

killing of one's mother
मातृहत्या mātŕhatyā, मातृघात mātŕghāt

matricide in Marathi

killing of one's mother
मातृवध mātŕvadh, मातृघात mātŕghāt

matricide in Urdu

matricide
اپنی ماں کا قتل apnī mā̃ kā qatl

matricide in Bengali

মাতৃহত্যা
More languagesFewer languages
matricide in Kannada
ತಾಯ್ಕೊಲೆ tāykole
matricide in Tagalog
matrisidyo, matrisida
matricide in Indonesian
matrisida

Forms of matricide

pluralmatricides

Origin of matricide

From French matricide, from Latin mātricīda (“person who kills his own mother”) and mātricīdium (“the murder of one's mother”). By surface analysis, matri- + -cide.

Words formed from matricide

Questions about matricide

What does matricide mean?
Matricide means the killing of one's mother.
What is matricide in Hindi?
Matricide in Hindi is मातृहत्या (mātŕhatyā), मातृघात (mātŕghāt). See Matricide meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is matricide?
Matricide is a noun.
What is the plural of matricide?
The plural of matricide is matricides.

Words near matricide in the dictionary

  1. matricial
  2. matrician
  3. matricians
  4. matricidal
  5. matricidally
  6. matricide
  7. matricides
  8. matricin
  9. matricization
  10. matricizations
  11. matricize

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: matricide (page history and authors); اپنی ماں کا قتل (Urdu) (page history and authors); matricide (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-matricide.wav.

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