genocide
- the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.
Origin of genocide
Examples from the Web for genocide
Contemporary Examples
He was referring to the genocide of Muslims during the Bosnian War.
To get a resolution about genocide passed, he devised a letter-writing campaign.
By WWII, Lemkin had been peddling his ideas on genocide for more than a decade.
Raphael Lemkin was, by all accounts, obsessed with genocide long before he invented a name for it.
Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans?
Are Politicians Too Dumb to Understand the Lyrics to ‘Born in the USA’?Parker Molloy
November 6, 2014
Historical Examples
He didn't want to be accused of genocide, since the Lani were so human in appearance.
The Lani PeopleJ. F. Bone
Genocide is defined as the extermination of a race of sapient beings.
Little FuzzyHenry Beam Piper
The mystery of our failure at genocide forced an unpleasant decision on Benson.
The Test ColonyWinston Marks
In a chance encounter with angry Serb mobs in the streets of Pristina he accused the Albanians of genocide.
After the RainSam Vaknin
Nuclear nightmares intermingled with Armenian and Jewish flashbacks of genocide.
After the RainSam Vaknin
genocide
- the policy of deliberately killing a nationality or ethnic group
Word Origin
Word Origin and History for genocide
n.
1944, apparently coined by Polish-born U.S. jurist Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) in his work "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe" [p.19], in reference to Nazi extermination of Jews, literally "killing a tribe," from Greek genos "race, kind" (see genus) + -cide. The proper formation would be *genticide.
Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. [Lemkin]
Earlier in a similar sense was populicide (1799), from French populicide, by 1792, a word from the Revolution. This was taken into German, e.g. Völkermeuchelnden "genocidal" (Heine), which was Englished 1893 as folk-murdering.
genocide
The deliberate destruction of an entire race or nation. The Holocaust conducted by the Nazis in Germany and the Rwandan genocide are examples of attempts at genocide.