self-murder
Americannoun
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self-murders
plural
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the act of ending one's own life; suicide (sometimes used in historical contexts).
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any action that is highly destructive to oneself or one's ambitions.
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
But why were people prosecuted for attempted "self-murder" and how did things change?
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2011
Toleration, in that instance, would have been self-murder, and many other examples might be alleged, in which their necessary measures of self-defence have been exaggerated into cruelty, and their most indispensable precautions distorted into persecution.
From Orations by John Quincy Adams
Not that he would really incite the beasts to dispatch him, without a special inspiration, because that would have been self-murder; but this expresses the courage and desire of his soul.
From The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints January, February, March by Alban Butler
The Hebrews in particular had an aversion to self-murder, and during a period in their history of 4000 years there were only eight or ten suicides recorded.
From Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by Walter L. (Walter Lytle) Pyle
With the advent of Christianity, condemning as it did the barbarous customs of self-mutilation and self-murder, these practices seem to disappear gradually; but stoicism and indifference to pain were exhibited in martyrdom.
From Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by Walter L. (Walter Lytle) Pyle
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
