parricide

1 someone who kills his or her parent

2 murder of your own parents

English

Etymology

Old French, or from Latin parricida, parricidium, associated with pater ‘father’, parens ‘parent’.

Pronunciation

• /'pærɪsʌɪd/

Noun

1. someone who kills a relative, especially a parent

   • 1605: I told him the revenging gods / ’Gainst parricides did all the thunder bend — William Shakespeare, King Lear II.i

2. the killing of a relative, especially a parent
3. the killing of a ruler; treason

Parricide (Latin "parricida", killer of a close relative) stemming from (Latin "parri", alike or equal, and "-cida", -cide, or killer) is defined as:

1. the act of murdering one's father (patricide), mother (matricide), or other close relative
2. the act of murdering a person (such as the ruler of one's country) who stands in a relationship resembling that of a father
3. a person who commits such an act

Various definitions exist for the term parricide, with the biggest discrepancy being whether or not the killing has to be defined as a murder (usually killing with malice aforethought) to qualify as a parricide.

Parricide is most often committed by a son against his mother, and is associated with delusional thinking.

In pre-revolutionary France, cases of notoriously accidental killings were still treated as parricides, with the offenders facing the extra harsh penalties destined for authors of such heinous crimes.

Ancient Rome had a unique punishment for parricide, which is described at length in Steven Saylor's novel Roman Blood, based on one of Cicero's actual murder trials. The felon was severely scourged then sewn into a stout leather bag with a dog, a snake, a rooster, and a monkey, and the bag was thrown into the river Tiber. Tacitus called it the "parricide's doom". Plutarch records that the old laws of Romulus had no penalty for parricide because it was considered a crime too evil ever to be committed. Lucius Hostius reportedly was the first parricide in Rome, sometime after the Second Punic War.

In Japan, parricide once brought heavy punishment. Because of the Chiyo Aizawa case, however, the law was abolished.

Parricide in literature

• Père Goriot by Balzac: "...so much for providing black veils for parricides, so much for sawdust, so much for pulleys and cord for the knife."

• The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky: "But it's not an ordinary case of murder, it's a case of parricide. That impresses men's minds, and to such a degree that the very triviality and incompleteness of the evidence becomes less trivial and less incomplete even to an unprejudiced mind."

• The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli: "[Oliverotto] was captured there, a year after his parricide, and together with his former mentor in prowess and villainy, strangled."

• The Stranger by Albert Camus: "He went so far as to hope that human justice would mete out punishment unflinchingly. But he wasn't afraid to say it: my callousness inspired in him a horror nearly greater than which he felt at the crime of parricide."

• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy: "He moves north through small settlements and farms, working for day wages and found. He sees a parricide hanged in a crossroads hamlet and the man's friends run forward and pull his legs and he hangs dead from his rope while urine darkens his trousers."

• Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné by Victor Hugo: "Jean Martin was the one who shot his father with a pistol as the old man was opening a window...it seemed to me as though the dungeon was full of men, strange men who carried their heads in their left hands, and held them by the mouth, because there was no hair upon them. Each raised his fist at me, the parricide excepted."

References

• Dictionary.com entry for parricide

aborticide, fratricide, fungicide, genocide, germicide, herbicide, homicide, infanticide, insecticide, matricide, microbicide, patricide, pesticide, regicide, rodenticide, sororicide, suicide, uxoricide, vermicide