ursicide

English

Etymology

From Latin ursus +‎ -icide.

Pronunciation

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Noun

ursicide (countable and uncountable, plural ursicides) (rare)

1. The killing of a bear.
   • 1847, J. Willyams Grylls, “The Out-Station; or, Jaunts in the Jungle”, in W. Harrison Ainsworth, editor, The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist, part the third, London: Chapman and Hall, […], “Dealings with the Firm of Bruin and Co.”, page 70:

     Bruin having perpetrated a charge worthy of Waterloo, is toddling off as fast as a rather extensive morning’s repast will allow him. / Having made sure of whatever remains of the wreck of eatables and drinkables by consuming them on the spot, a proceeding that in a great measure restores my philosophical equilibrium, I again sally forth bent upon ursicide. / I am not going to be knocked over a second time in so unceremonious a manner, so I pick my way through the underwood of the forest, as cautiously and stealthily as possible, almost on my hands and knees, my gun on full cock, and ready for another charge as soon as the enemy chooses.

   • 1888 May 9, N. Y. Sun, quotee, “A Bear Story”, in Evening Gazette, Pittston, Pa., page 4, column 4:

     Master Will Altemose, of Tunkhannock, Pa., seems to be the most promising lad of his age in the country. His exploit of nonchalantly chopping up a she bear and two cubs the other day marks him as a person of courage and resource. On the day in question Master Altemose was chopping wood, and not prospecting for bear. What ursicides he would have committed if he had been really loaded for b’ar can only be imagined. We commend the study of Willie, the Bear King of Tunkhannock, to those sad-orbed wailers who insist that the boys of America are a degenerate and cigarette-ruined race.

   • 1942, Calumet, page 6:

     One morning this week about five o'clock our brisk mountaineer neighbor, Jim Carr, loomed up in the kitchen, his usual magnetic manner a little subdued. […] He had come to confess an Ursicide. It developed that he had carried out his threat to kill a certain bear, against all game preservation laws because it had been menacing his live stock, even causing his wife much worry about the safety of the children.

   • 2018 May 17, Linda Stansberry, “Death Visits the Zoo”, in North Coast Journal of Politics, People and Art, volume XXIX, number 20, “Bearing the News”, page 15, column 1:

     In 1982, Eureka City Manager Robert Stockwell and Parks and Recreation Director Ben Adan made the controversial decision to euthanize two adult bears and rehome their cubs as they allegedly could not afford to move the bears while their habitat was being rebuilt. […] / People magazine, from which we got many of the details about the death of the two bears, called the incident “America’s most notorious ursicide.”

2. One who kills a bear.
   • a. 1861, Theodore Winthrop, “Life in the Open Air. — Katahdin and the Penobscot.”, in Life in the Open Air, and Other Papers, Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, […], published 1873, “Ripogenus”, pages 74–75:

     I made for the barns to catch Bruin napping or lolling in the old hay. I entertain a vendetta toward the ursine family. I had a duello, pistol against claw, with one of them in the mountains of Oregon, and have nothing to show to point the moral and adorn the tale. My antagonist of that hand-to-hand fight received two shots, and then dodged into cover and was lost in the twilight. Soon or late in my life, I hoped that I should avenge this evasion. Ripogenus would, perhaps, give what the Nachchese Pass had taken away. / Vain hope! I was not to be an ursicide. I begin to fear that I shall slay no other than my proper personal bearishness. I did my duty for another result at Ripogenus. I bolted audaciously into every barn. I made excursions into the woods around. I found the mark of the beast, not the beast. He had not long ago decamped, and was now, perhaps, sucking the meditative paw hard-by in an arbor of his bear-garden.

   • 1906 March 10, Forest and Stream, page 385, column 3:

     It was entirely proper and in order to slay a deer or two while in the deer woods, and they did bring in a choice specimen or two for camp use or for friends at home. But Fernaldus was touched with ursimania. He would become an ursicide. The notion of possessing a bearskin rug pleased his fancy, and over the hill, in a tangle beside the brook, he had come across fresh signs of a monster Bruin.

   • 1987 December, Roy Herbert, “Dog Sugar Item Roger”, in New Scientist, volume 116, number 1592/1593, page 39, column 1:

     “HIEROPHANTIC—expounding mysteries” the note said. “Pernoctation—all night vigil” and “ursicide—one who kills a bear”. The words were scrawled on the paper, which had fallen out of an old wallet. It was a relic of times long ago when in idle moments I foraged through the dictionary and tried to construct sentences using the words that caught my interest. The mysteries of killing bears could very well have been explained to a tyro by a seasoned ursicide during an all-night vigil, perhaps achieved while sitting up a tree. / I turned the paper over and was at once transported into the early 1950s.

Anagrams

• suicider