suicide machine

[soo-uh-sahyd muh--sheen]

noun

1. a device designed to permit a terminally ill person to end their own life, as by the automatic injection of a lethal drug.

Word History and Origins

Origin of suicide machine¹

First recorded in 1985–90

Example Sentences

"Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up," the anthropologist Ronald Wright warns, calling industrial society "a suicide machine."

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This museum even has the infamous Thanatron, Jack Kevorkian’s suicide machine, with a name that means “instrument of death” in Greek.

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Euthanasia expert invents 'suicide machine'

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It may be a fraud, a suicide machine.

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Tinguely had recently shocked the art world with a piece at the Museum of Modern Art called “Homage to New York,” a giant “suicide machine” that he had engineered to slowly self-destruct, ultimately bursting into flames.

Read more on The New Yorker