English
populicide
Populicide may come from French populicide ‘(noun) slaughter of a people’.
- Frenchc. 1600–presentpopulicide1‘(noun) slaughter of a people’uncertain
- Englishearliest quotation 1824populicide1
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English populicide
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1824, Jeremy Bentham, [Letter 3153] To the Catholic Association: “Less extensively mischievous, tyrannicide would be less flagitious than…”.
Earlier history uncertain. See Wiktionary.
Lineage
- Frenchc. 1600–presentpopulicideWiktionary, English populicide‘(noun) slaughter of a people’uncertain
- Englishearliest quotation 1824populicideWiktionary, English populicide. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1824, Jeremy Bentham, [Letter 3153] To the Catholic Association: “Less extensively mischievous, tyrannicide would be less flagitious than…”
Formed from populace + -icide
The story
Probably an unadapted borrowing from French populicide (‘(noun) slaughter of a people; (adjective) harmful to the people’) (obsolete, rare), from Latin populus (‘community; people; nation’) + French -cide (suffix meaning ‘killing’). The French word populicides was coined by the French journalist and revolutionary François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) in 1795 to describe the massacre of 117,000 farmers in the Vendée region during the French Revolution.
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *kh₂eyd- ‘to cut, hew’
hit, decision, precise, cement, concise, circumcision, incision, chisel, scissor, incisive, excision, caesium, incisor, 26 more
through Old Latin populus
through Latin populus ‘community’
Today it means
noun The deliberate slaughter of a people or a nation.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “populicide”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / French populicide / populicide