Word of the Day:
ecocide
What It Means
The complete destruction of an ecosystem due to human activities, such as due to exploitation of resources, nuclear warfare, or the dumping of harmful chemicals.
Ecocide in Context
“It has also been suggested that environmental crimes might include the proposed crime of ‘ecocide’ or ‘geocide’, with proponents of this view attempting to draw parallels between destructive acts towards the environment and those against the qualifying groups for genocide. […] [M]any who advocate...”
Did You Know?
From eco- + -cide. First used in 1969 by the American plant biologist Arthur Galston to refer to the willful destruction of the environment with Agent Orange.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ecocide (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “ecocide.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ecocide. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.