Word.ws English Dictionary

papacide

papacide is the alternative form of papicide.

Meaning of papicide

Noun

papicide (countable and uncountable, plural papicides)

  1. (uncommon) The killing of a pope.
    • The story, which would certainly have moved to tears the readers of Fr Bresciani’s feuilletons, smacked too much of invention and was too oozing with edification to be credible. If only there had been an actual attempted papicide with witnesses!1964, Carlo Falconi, translated by Muriel Grindrod, “Part I: The Build-up”, in Pope John and the Ecumenical Council: A Diary of the Second Vatican Council, September - December 1962, Cleveland, Oh....
  2. (countable, uncommon) One who kills (or attempts to kill) a pope.
    • The ineffable self-satisfaction displayed by the young Turkish papicide during his interrogation and trial was not unreasonable.1982, Polish Perspectives, volume XXV, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Wspólczesne RSW Prasa-Książka-Ruch, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 40

Forms of papacide

pluralpapacides

Origin of papacide

From papa- + -cide.

Questions about papacide

What is papacide the alternative form of?
Papacide is the alternative form of papicide.

Words near papacide in the dictionary

  1. papabote
  2. papabotes
  3. papabots
  4. papabotte
  5. papabottes
  6. papacide
  7. papacides
  8. papacies
  9. papacy
  10. papad
  11. Papadakis

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: papacide (page history and authors); papicide (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: “papacide.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/papacide. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.