fratricide means the killing of one's brother (or sister). It carries an Arena rating of 1687, earned across 37 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, fratricide ranks #140 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #1,432 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #2,448 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words, #2,586 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words.
Why “fratricide” is a great word
FRATRICIDE — [Noun] The deliberate killing of one's brother or sibling. From Middle French fratricide or its etymon Latin frātricīdium, from frāter ("brother") and -cīdium ("killing, a killer"). First recorded in English 1490–1500. Unlike homicide, a clinical term for killing any person, or sororicide, which specifies a slain sister, fratricide carries the intimate, unbearable contradiction of kinship betrayed. It is Cain’s furrow in the first field, the poisoned chalice passed across a banquet table, and the political purge where the first name on the list was once called across a nursery—the ultimate civil war within a single, shattered house, leaving a void shaped precisely like the one who is gone.
Etymology
From Middle French fratricide or its etymon Latin frātricīdium.
noun
- The killing of one's brother (or sister).
- The intentional or unintentional killing of a comrade in arms.e.g.“From January on, Third Army also spent a good deal of energy trying to solve the problem of fratricide, the killing or injuring of one's own forces by what is ironically called 'friendly fire,'[…]” — 1999, Richard M. Swain, Lucky War: Third Army in Desert Storm, DIANE Publishing, page 180:
- The undesirable situation where the separate missiles from a MIRV interfere with each other as they explode.
- A person who commits fratricide.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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