lynchee

/lɪnˈt͡ʃiː/

Etymology

From lynch + -ee.

lynchee means the victim of a lynching. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.

Why this word is great

LYNCHEE — [Noun] A person put to death, especially by hanging, by mob action without legal authority. From the verb *lynch* ("to put to death by mob action without due process") + the suffix *-ee* (indicating a person who is the object or recipient of an action). Unlike "victim" (a porous, general term for any harm) or "martyr" (which sanctifies a death for a cause), "lynchee" isolates the brutal, civic rupture of extrajudicial murder. It is the rough grain of the rope, the photograph sold as a souvenir, the empty chair at a family table—a word that is a coffin, built to hold the cold fact of a citizen made into a public and terminal example.

noun

The victim of a lynching.“The lynchee's agony is not merely a convenient trope for romantic despair here: it is a preexisting condition, a racewide image of abjection that the loss of a lover serves to reactivate.”