trucidation

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English

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Etymology

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From Latin trucidatio.

Noun

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trucidation (countable and uncountable, plural trucidations)

  1. (rare) The act of killing; slaughter or massacre.
    • 1883 May 8, Robert Louis Stevenson, letter to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson, quoted in, “Letters Vol. II”, in The Biographical Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson:
      I loathe the snails, but from loathing to actual butchery, trucidation of multitudes, there is still a step that I hesitate to take.
    • 1938, James Bridie, Babes in the Woods:
      ɢɪʟʟᴇᴛ: They hate me as much as I hate them. And that's saying a good deal. Girdlestone may deal with Walker's … trucidations of a dead and revered language. I shall begin to live!
    • 2008, Perry Anderson, “The Divisions of Cyprus”, in London Review of Books, volume 30, number 8:
      Labour, which had started the disasters of Cyprus by denying it any decolonisation after 1945, had now completed them, abandoning it to trucidation.