Word.ws English Dictionary

muricide

muricide noun: mouse-killing (especially in rats).

Noun

muricide (countable and uncountable, plural muricides)

  1. (uncountable) Mouse-killing (especially in rats).
    • That Tabby their feathers had frighten’d, / Amusing her jaws with the carnage of mice— / But lately her habits had grown very nice, / And her taste much more enlighten’d. / Could that delicate skin harbour murder within? / Those eyes so mildly winking, / Could they gaze on the pangs of the quiet...1829 February 20, Θ [pseudonym], “‘An ower true tale.’”, in The Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, and Huntingdonshire Gazette, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: […] James Hodson, […], page [4], column 1
    • This district […] supports a local mouse-god; […] consequently not only is muricide a penal offence but anything which affects the lives and fortunes of these engaging little rodents cannot fail to be of deep concern.1924 September 12, The Times of India, Bombay, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 8, column 5
  2. (countable, uncommon) Someone or something that kills mice, rats, or voles.
    • Muricide, (lat[in]) a mouſe-killer, a cowardly fellow.[1658, Edward Phillips, compiler, “Muricide”, in The New World of English Words: Or, A General Dictionary: […], London: […] E. Tyler, for Nath[aniel] Brook […], →OCLC, column 2
    • […] The old mordacious Rat that dared devour / Antecedaneous Ale in John’s domestic bower. // Lo here, with hirsute honors doffed, succinct / Of saponaceous locks, the Priest who linked / In Hymen’s golden bands the torn unthrift, / Whose means exiguous stared from many a rift, / Even as he kissed...1857 September 19, “The Domicile Erected by John. Translated from the Vulgate of Mother Goose. By A. Pope [imitating Alexander Pope].”, in Springfield Daily Republican, volume 14, number 220 (4106...

Examples of muricide in a sentence

  • The experimental models used included isolation and shock-induced conspecific aggression, muricide (mouse-killing), and ranicide (frog-killing).1974 October, Bruce K. Bernard, Ronald M. Paolino, “Biogenic Amines and Androgens in the Study of Aggressive Behavior”, in...
  • The mechanism of muricide behavior probably involves a discrete area of the brain, the amygdala.1977, Israel Hanin, Earl Usdin, Animal Models in Psychiatry and Neurology:
  • This was generally supported by Banerjee (1974) who found that two injections of 200 ng 6-OHDA intraventricularly failed to reduce muricide in rats […]1984, Stephen T. Mason, “Catecholamines and vegetative behaviour”, in Catecholamines and Behaviour, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN...
  • It is not just a question of whether crowding in mouse colonies or rat muricide and ranacide can tell us anything about human murder and torture.1985, Cannie Stark-Adamec, Robert E[dward] Adamec, “Problems in Aggression Research: An Introduction”, in Paula J[oan] Caplan, editor...

Forms of muricide

pluralmuricides

Origin of muricide

Borrowed from Latin mūricīdus (literally “mouse-killer”). By surface analysis, Latin mūs (“mouse”) + -icide (“killing; killer”).

Questions about muricide

What does muricide mean?
Muricide means mouse-killing (especially in rats).
How do you use muricide in a sentence?
The experimental models used included isolation and shock-induced conspecific aggression, muricide (mouse-killing), and ranicide (frog-killing).
What part of speech is muricide?
Muricide is a noun.
What is the plural of muricide?
The plural of muricide is muricides.

Words near muricide in the dictionary

  1. muricholic
  2. muricholic acid
  3. muricholic acids
  4. muricid
  5. muricidal
  6. muricide
  7. muricides
  8. muricids
  9. muricin
  10. muricine
  11. muricinine

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: muricide (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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