populicide

English

WOTD – 27 January 2025

Etymology

Probably an unadapted borrowing from French populicide (“(noun) slaughter of a people; (adjective) harmful to the people”) (obsolete, rare), from Latin populus (“community; people; nation”) + French -cide (suffix meaning ‘killing’). The French word populicides was coined by the French journalist and revolutionary François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) in 1795 to describe the massacre of 117,000 farmers in the Vendée region during the French Revolution. Equivalent to populace +‎ -icide.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈpɒpjʊlɪsaɪd/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpɑpjələˌsaɪd/
• Hyphenation: pop‧ul‧i‧cide

Noun

populicide (countable and uncountable, plural populicides)

1. (archaic) The deliberate slaughter of a people or a nation. [from early 19th c.]
   • [1798, [John Adolphus], “Garin”, in Biographical Anecdotes of the Founders of the French Republic, and of Other Eminent Characters, who have Distinguished Themselves in the Progress of the Revolution, volume II, London: […] R. Phillips, and sold by Mr. [Joseph] Johnson, […]; and Mr. [John] Debrett, […], →OCLC, page 242:

     In 1793, the capital vvas menaced vvith the dreadful ſcourge of famine, and if vve are to believe ſome ſpeculative men, this originated in a populicide conſpiracy, on the part of the then exiſting government.

     A use of the French word in an English text.]

   • 1824 December 9 (date written), Jeremy Bentham, “[Letter 3153] To the Catholic Association”, in Luke O’Sullivan, Catherine Fuller, editors, The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, volume 12 (July 1824 to June 1828), Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, published 2006, →ISBN, footer 5, page 73:

     Less extensively mischievous, tyrannicide would be less flagitious than populicide; murder of one, though he were a Secretary of State; or—but imagination must stop here—than murder of a promiscuous multitude of unarmed men, women, and children.

     This is the earliest attestation of the word recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary.

   • 1844 May, “Art. I. Historical Sketches of Statesmen who Flourished in the Time of George III. &c. Third Series. By Henry Lord Brougham. London: Knight & Co. [book review]”, in The Eclectic Review, volume XV (New Series), London: Thomas Ward & Co., […]; Edinburgh: W. Oliphant and Son; Glasgow: James MacLehose, →OCLC, page 502:

     [S]ome of them, the worst of all, take their stand in the highest ranks of society, rave in the senate, bluster in the council of the nation, shine at courts, and everywhere proclaim falsehood to be truth, vice to be virtue, apostacy^{[sic – meaning apostasy]} to be consistency, populicide to be patriotism; and while devoting the whole of their energies to blind, corrupt, and enslave mankind, they pretend to be the instructors, the monitors, the benefactors of the human race!

   • 1865 May 2, John Ruskin, “Work and Wages. To the Editor of ‘The Pall Mall Gazette.’”, in [Alexander Dundas Ogilvy Wedderburn], editor, Arrows of the Chace: Being a Collection of Scattered Letters Published Chiefly in the Daily Newspapers,—1840–1880 […], volume II (Letters on Politics, Economy, and Miscellaneous Matters), Orpington, Kent [London]: George Allen, […], published 1880, →OCLC, part [ii] (Letters on Political Economy), page 78:

     I mourn for Mr. [Abraham] Lincoln, as man should mourn the fate of man, when it is sudden and supreme. I hate regicide as I do populicide—deeply, if phrenzied; more deeply, if deliberate.

   • 1881 June 4, “French Literature”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, volume LI, number 1,336, London: […] Spottiswoode & Co., […], →OCLC, page 733, column 1:

     M. [Joseph] Salvador's reprinted treatise […] is a curious but not very enlivening book, in which […] arguments to prove that the Crucifixion was, in the first place, an act of deicide, then of populicide, then of legicide, and many other strange things are gathered together with a kind of serious simplicity which, at any rate for a time, supplies the want of practical force, method, and style.

   • [1918 February 27, “Increased food production necessary”, in The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post Company, →ISSN, →OCLC; quoted in [Henry Lee] Myers, “Indian Appropriations”, in Congressional Record: Containing the Proceedings and Debates of the Second Session of the Sixty-fifth Congress of the United States of America (United States Senate), volume LVI, part 4, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 25 March 1918, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 4020, column 2:

     Chancellor [Georg] von Hertling's speech in the Reichstag this week was the most cynical utterance yet made by the German populicides. Under the thin coating of phrases regarding universal peace principles appears the ravenous and murderous policy that is working its will in Russia.

     Referring to people who commit populicide.]

   • 1995, Stephen Laurence Kaplan, “The Vendée: Trope and Idée-Force”, in Farewell, Revolution: Disputed Legacies: France, 1789/1989, Ithaca, N.Y.; London: Cornell University Press, →ISBN, book 1 (Framing the Bicentennial), page 109:

     Finally, Philippe de Villiers announced that a group of lawyers would work out a petition asking the United Nations to recognize the "Vendéen populicide as a crime against humanity."

Derived terms

• populicidal

Related terms

• culturicide
• democide
• genocide

Translations

deliberate slaughter of a people or a nation

• Dutch: volksmoord m
• Finnish: kansanmurha (fi)
• French: populicide (fr) m (obsolete, rare)
• German: Völkermord (de) m
• Macedonian: please add this translation if you can
• Portuguese: populicídio m
• Spanish: populicidio m

Further reading

• “populicide”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

French

Etymology

From Latin populus (“community; people; nation”) + French -cide (suffix meaning ‘killing’). The word populicides was coined by the French journalist and revolutionary François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) in 1795 to describe the massacre of 117,000 farmers in the Vendée region during the French Revolution.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pɔ.py.li.sid/

Adjective

populicide (plural populicides)

1. (obsolete, rare) exterminatory (towards humans); populicidal [1794]
   • 1880, Paul Janet, Les Origines du socialisme contemporain‎^[1]:

     "Il s’agit d’établir, selon les expressions de Rousseau, que « le terrain n’est à personne, mais à tous ; » que tout ce que l’individu accapare au-delà de la subsistance est un vol social, » que le droit d’aliénabilité est « un attentat populicide », expression qui pour cette fois appartient à Babeuf, assez riche en néologismes."

     It is a question of establishing that, according to Rousseau’s expressions, ‘the land is not for nobody, but for everybody’, that everything that the individual occupies beyond sustenance is social theft, that the right of alienability is ‘an exterminatory attack’, an expression that in this case comes from Babeuf, so rich with neologisms.

Noun

populicide m (plural populicides)

1. (obsolete, rare) populicide (extermination)
   • 1877, Joseph Cohen, Les Pharisiens‎^[2], volume II, M. Lévy Frères, page 108:

     A peine les supplices de l’an 64 finissaient-ils, que la guerre implacable de l’an 66 commençait la torture du peuple juif, si justement appelée par Salvador « un populicide. »

     Barely any torments from ’64 were ending when the harsh war of ’66 started Jewry’s torment, so rightfully called by Salvador ‘a populicide.’

Anagrams

• duplicopie, duplicopié