# suicide

Pronunciation: say "SOO-i-syd" US /ˈsuɪˌsaɪd/, UK /ˈs(j)uːɪˌsaɪd/

## Noun

1. The deliberate act of ending one's own life, or an instance of this.
   - Simple: The act of choosing to end your own life, or one case of someone doing this.
   - _Suicide remains a serious public health concern around the world._
   - _The family struggled to understand what had driven him to suicide._
2. Relating to an attack in which the attacker deliberately dies as part of carrying it out.
   - Simple: Relating to an attack where the attacker also dies on purpose.
   - _The group claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing that killed dozens._
   - _Analysts traced the rise of suicide attacks across the region._
3. An action that could bring about the literal or figurative death of a person or organization, even though death is not the action's aim.
   - Simple: Something you do that could destroy you or your group, even if that is not what you meant to happen.
   - _Launching the product without any testing would be commercial suicide._
   - _For a candidate, ignoring the scandal amounts to electoral suicide._
4. Someone who has intentionally taken their own life.
   - Simple: A person who has killed themselves on purpose.
   - _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._
6. A conditioning drill made up of repeated sprints of increasing distance, each followed by a sprint back to the start with no rest between them.
   - Simple: A running drill where you sprint to farther and farther lines, returning each time without a break.
   - _Basketball players dread the suicides their coach saves for the end of practice._
   - _She timed each suicide to track her sprinting progress._
7. A soft drink made by combining all the flavors available at a soda fountain into a single cup. *(slang, US)*
   - Simple: A drink made by mixing every soda flavor together at the fountain.
   - _She poured a little of each flavor to make a suicide._
   - _The teenagers laughed as they gulped down their suicides._
8. A 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.
   - Simple: A children's game where you throw a ball at a wall and at other players to get them out.
   - _The schoolyard echoed with kids playing suicide before the bell rang._
   - _She was the last one standing in a fierce round of suicide._

## Verb

5. To kill someone and stage their death to look like they took their own life rather than were murdered.
   - Simple: To kill someone and make it look like they killed themselves.
   - _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._

## Other meanings

- (verb) To deliberately end one's own life.
- (verb) To bring about one's own destruction or failure.
- (noun) A 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.

## 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.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/suicide (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).