suicide
Pluralsuicides (some meanings)
Pluralsuicides (some meanings)
Formssuicides, suiciding, suicided
- 1The deliberate act of ending one's own life, or an instance of this.
Suicide remains a serious public health concern around the world.
The family struggled to understand what had driven him to suicide.
UsageNo article for the act: thinking about suicide, driven to suicide; a single death is a suicide.
Note
It first appears in Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (1643), apparently from New Latin suicidium (sui, 'of oneself', plus -cidium, 'killing'), though it may well have been formed in English first. When Lincoln warned in 1838 that a nation might 'die by suicide', he meant the abstract act rather than a single death.
- 2Relating to an attack in which the attacker deliberately dies as part of carrying it out.
The group claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing that killed dozens.
Analysts traced the rise of suicide attacks across the region.
UsageGoes before another noun: suicide bombing, suicide attack, suicide vest.
- 3An action that could bring about the literal or figurative death of a person or organization, even though death is not the action's aim.
Launching the product without any testing would be commercial suicide.
For a candidate, ignoring the scandal amounts to electoral suicide.
UsageUsually after a word naming the area, with no article: political suicide, commercial suicide; or it's suicide to + verb.
Note
The figurative use usually works in two set patterns. One is an adjective naming the arena: political suicide, or Everett Dirksen's 'fiscal suicide on the installment plan' (1959). The other is a bare predicate with an infinitive and no article: 'it's suicide to change jobs in mid-career.' Either way the speaker is warning that a risk is fatal. Nobody is choosing to die.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- These are examples, not exhaustive patterns. Figurative suicide also occurs without an adjective or an infinitive, as in Lincoln's description of national self-destruction. presidentlincoln.illinois.gov
- Everett Dirksen used the words 'fiscal suicide on the installment plan' in 1959. everettdirksen.dirksencenter.org
- The quoted wording 'it's suicide to change jobs in mid-career' is attested. en.wiktionary.org
Less common meanings
- 4Someone who has intentionally taken their own life.
In the old parish records, the man is listed simply as a suicide, with no reason given.
In earlier centuries, suicides were often denied burial on church grounds.
- 5To kill someone and stage their death to look like they took their own life rather than were murdered.
Online theories alleged that operatives had suicided the banker to bury the scandal.
In the thriller, a reporter fears that the people she is investigating will try to suicide her.
UsageOften passive, he was suicided; using it accuses someone of murder.
Note
A dark, ironic coinage, often heard in the passive or in accusations: 'he would be suicided' (Tobias Jones, White Death, 2011), or 'I think they suicided him.' The verb carries the speaker's suspicion inside it. Calling a death 'suicided' asserts that it was murder dressed up, so the word nearly always signals a claim of conspiracy rather than a neutral report.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- The words 'he would be suicided' occur in Tobias Jones's White Death; the parenthesis identifies the author and work, without identifying a fictional speaker. en.wiktionary.org
- White Death by Tobias Jones was first published in 2011. en.wikipedia.org
- The quotation 'I think they suicided him' is attested; Wiktionary reproduces it from Philip Willan's The Vatican at War, attributed there to Gelli. en.wiktionary.org
- 6A conditioning drill made up of repeated sprints of increasing distance, each followed by a sprint back to the start with no rest between them.
Basketball players dread the suicides their coach saves for the end of practice.
She timed each suicide to track her sprinting progress.
UsageUsually run suicides, as a set of drills.
- 7A soft drink made by combining all the flavors available at a soda fountain into a single cup.
She poured a little of each flavor to make a suicide.
The teenagers laughed as they gulped down their suicides.
Note
In Mark Pendergrast's For God, Country and Coca-Cola it starts from a Coca-Cola base, with every other flavor added on top. Graveyard and swamp water name the same mixture.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Mark Pendergrast wrote For God, Country and Coca-Cola. books.google.com
- Pendergrast describes a suicide as Coca-Cola with every other available flavor added. en.wiktionary.org
- Graveyard and swamp water also name this mixture. oklahoma.gov
- 8A children's playground game in which a ball is bounced off a wall and thrown at other players, who are knocked out when the ball hits them.
The schoolyard echoed with kids playing suicide before the bell rang.
She was the last one standing in a fierce round of suicide.
- 9To deliberately end one's own life.
"Her husband suicided three years ago. Just like a man!"
1917, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams - 10To bring about one's own destruction or failure.
Here in America we just called them survivors, after the Chinese suicided their psychotic society in the seventies, and destroyed most of urban America in the process.
2010, Martin H. Greenberg, The End of the World: Stories of the Apocalypse - 11A diabolo trick in which one handstick is released and allowed to spin a full 360° around the diabolo before being caught by the same hand that let it go.
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Origin
The word is first recorded in 1643, in Thomas Browne's Religio Medici. It appears to come from New Latin suicidium, made of sui ("of oneself," the genitive reflexive pronoun) and -cidium ("act of killing or murder"), but many believe it was formed in English first and only later entered Latin. Old English selfcwalu (literally "self-slaughter") became native Middle English seolf-cwale, which suicide replaced and may have been modeled on. The sense of a person who kills themselves perhaps follows the pattern of homicide and patricide, or, less likely, comes from Medieval Latin suicida.