parricide
parricides
If a character in a novel kills one of her own parents, it's called parricide. Your dad will be impressed by your vocabulary skills if you say mid-argument, "I'm so mad at you I could commit parricide!"
You can use the word parricide for the crime of murdering a mother or father, but it also means "one who kills their own parent." Historically, people who kill parental figures (like kings, for example) have also been charged with parricide. Parricide features as an important plot point in many books, ranging from "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" to "The Brothers Karamazov." Parricide combines Latin roots parus, "relative" and cida, "killer."
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the murder of your own father or mother
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someone who kills his or her parent
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type of:
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liquidator, manslayer, murderer
a criminal who commits homicide (who performs the unlawful premeditated killing of another human being)
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liquidator, manslayer, murderer
Vocabulary lists containing parricide
As you read Act 3 of William Shakespeare's "The Tragedy of Macbeth," learn this word list. Here are links to lists for texts in Grade 10's Collection 5: Why Read Shakespeare?, Macbeth, Act 1, Macbeth, Act 2, Macbeth, Act 3, Macbeth, Act 4, Macbeth, Act 5, Holinshed's Chronicles, The Macbeth Murder Mystery
Ovid's Metamorphoses features myths and stories of change, mutation, and transformation. Learn these words from the translation by John Dryden here.
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