matricide
/ˈmatrɪsʌɪd
/ /ˈmeɪtrɪsʌɪd/noun [mass noun]
1The killing of one’s mother: a man suspected of matricide...
- I can even, to a lesser degree, comprehend stalkers, serial killers, matricide, fratricide, genocide.
- He is at pains to point out that, rather than committing the usual matricide / patricide so common in the intellectual sphere, his paper augments my interpretation, superimposing one interpretation over the other.
- Her mother, Clytemnestra, has been driven mad by dreams of her own death at the hands of her son, Orestes, who accomplishes that matricide as revenge for his mother's murder of his father, Agamemnon.
1.1 [count noun] A person who kills their mother.The would-be matricide, by the way, will not be charged and social services are dealing with the matter....
- We get little real sense of the inner torment suffered by the matricide Orestes and his sister-accomplice Electra, who, like Hamlet, have been handed the task of committing murder to avenge their father and restore order.
Derivatives
matricidal
/ /ˌmeɪtrɪˈsʌɪdl / adjective ...- Nero could not have imagined that Seneca might show up on the outskirts of town arguing that his matricidal past would come back to haunt his new post-fire reconstruction agenda.
- Plus, his matricidal ramblings are beyond the pale even for hip hop; gangsta rappers, like their celluloid counterparts, will consistently take hiatus from issuing colorful death threats to pay homage to dear old mom.
- But the current younger generation, at least as it is on view here, doesn't have any of the patricidal or matricidal tendencies that young artists used to have.
Origin
Late 16th century: from Latin matricidium, from mater, matr- 'mother' + -cidium (see -cide).