Word.ws English Dictionary

vaccicide

/ˈvæksɪsaɪd/

vaccicide noun: the killing of a cow.

Noun

vaccicide (uncountable)

  1. (rare) The killing of a cow.
    • Cow killing in Cashmere is punished as a worse crime than homicide! Travellers to Cashmere in those days — entering the valley by the Shupeyon route — will perhaps remember the skeleton of a man hanging in rusty chains from a prominent bough of the first large tree which met the eye on emerging...1887, David John Falconer Newall, The Highlands of India II: Field Sports and Travel in India, sect. i, ch. iv, p. 49
    • He has a great reverence for the bovine species, for Apis is sacred to the Kashmiri…and in Kashmir “vaccicide” is a capital crime.1900, Ashley Carus-Wilson, Irene Petrie: Missionary to Kashmir (3rd ed., 1901), ch. xi, p. 249

Examples of vaccicide in a sentence

  • That wretch was hanged for vaccicide…a terrible example of Maharajah Golaub Sing’s Draconian laws!1887, David John Falconer Newall, The Highlands of India II: Field Sports and Travel in India, sect. i, ch. iv, p. 49
  • Anthony Burgess is not confessing to the crime of culpable vaccicide.1987, Alfred Phillips, The Lawyer and Society, p. 127:

Origin of vaccicide

Formed in English as vacci- (“cow”) + -cide (“killing”). Compare the earlier French vaccicide (“a killer of cows”). First attested in 1865.

Questions about vaccicide

What does vaccicide mean?
Vaccicide means the killing of a cow.
How do you use vaccicide in a sentence?
That wretch was hanged for vaccicide…a terrible example of Maharajah Golaub Sing’s Draconian laws!
What part of speech is vaccicide?
Vaccicide is a noun.
How do you pronounce vaccicide?
Vaccicide is pronounced /ˈvæksɪsaɪd/ (UK).

Words near vaccicide in the dictionary

  1. vaccenic
  2. vaccenic acid
  3. vaccenyl
  4. vaccenyl acetate
  5. vacci-
  6. vaccicide
  7. vaccident
  8. vaccidents
  9. vaccimulgence
  10. vaccina
  11. vaccinable

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: vaccicide (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)-Rho9998-vaccicide.wav.

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