Word.ws English Dictionary

prolicide

prolicide noun: the crime of destroying one's offspring, either in the womb or after birth.

Noun

prolicide (countable and uncountable, plural prolicides)

  1. (uncountable) The crime of destroying one's offspring, either in the womb or after birth.
    • PROLICIDE […] Admits of two divisions, fœticide or criminal abortion and infanticide or the destruction of the new born infant.1827, Robley Dunglison, Syllabus of the Lectures on Medical Jurisprudence, page 93
  2. (countable) One who commits prolicide.
    • Perhaps they had accommodated the foregoing statement to the casuistical axiom, non homo est, qui non futurus est, which is a very agreeable one to prolicides.1836, Michael Ryan, A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence and State Medicine, page 283

Forms of prolicide

pluralprolicides

Origin of prolicide

From Latin prōlēs (“offspring”) + -cide.

Questions about prolicide

What does prolicide mean?
Prolicide means the crime of destroying one's offspring, either in the womb or after birth.
What part of speech is prolicide?
Prolicide is a noun.
What is the plural of prolicide?
The plural of prolicide is prolicides.

Words near prolicide in the dictionary

  1. proletarizing
  2. proletary
  3. Proletcult
  4. Proletkult
  5. prolibrigenal
  6. prolicide
  7. prolicides
  8. prolidase
  9. prolidases
  10. prolife
  11. prolifer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prolicide (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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