Word
suicide
Phoneticssui·cide
US/ˈsuəˌsaɪd/
UK/sˈuːɪsˌaɪd/
Definitions
01ending one's own life
n. the act of intentionally killing yourself.
n. the act of intentionally taking one's own life. Uncountable in the abstract sense; countable when referring to specific instances.
“The charity provides a 24-hour phone line for people who are thinking about suicide.”
“Public health initiatives have focused on reducing the stigma surrounding mental health to help prevent suicide among vulnerable populations.”
Synonyms
02ruining a career or plan
n. an action that is likely to destroy your career, reputation, or a business.
n. a course of action that is likely to result in the ruin of one's own interests, career, or organization.
“Quitting his job before finding a new one was professional suicide.”
“The CEO's decision to ignore the safety warnings was described by industry analysts as corporate suicide.”
Formal
Synonyms
03mixed soda drink
n. a drink made by mixing all the different soda flavors together from a machine.
n. a beverage created by combining all available flavors at a soda fountain.
“The kids at the party were all drinking suicides from the soda fountain.”
“While the adults chose single-flavor sodas, the teenagers experimented by creating a suicide with every syrup available in the dispenser.”
American English · Slang · Informal
Synonyms
04sprint exercise
n. a type of exercise where you run back and forth between lines at increasing distances.
n. a conditioning drill consisting of a series of sprints of increasing lengths, each followed by a return to the starting point.
“The basketball coach made the team run suicides at the end of practice.”
“Exhausted after the scrimmage, the players were nonetheless ordered to complete three sets of suicides to build their endurance.”
Informal
Synonyms
05to end one's own life
v. to intentionally kill yourself.
v. to intentionally take one's own life. Intransitive; often replaced by 'commit suicide' in general usage.
“The character in the novel decided to suicide after losing everything.”
“While the verb form is used in some clinical or academic texts, most speakers prefer the phrase 'to commit suicide' in daily conversation.”
Formal
Synonyms
06to make a murder look like suicide
v. to kill someone but make it look like they killed themselves.
v. to kill a person and manipulate the scene to suggest the death was a suicide. Transitive; often used in the context of conspiracy theories.
“Some people believe the witness didn't kill himself but was actually suicided.”
“The internet was flooded with theories claiming the high-profile prisoner had been suicided by those who feared his testimony.”
Slang · Informal
Real-World Examples
“She was 16 when she died by suicide at a Nottinghamshire children’s home.” “A 2023 report estimated there could be between 117 and 496 gambling-related suicides in England each year.” “Loftus’s mother was found drowned, perhaps as a result of suicide.” “Sharing a study that found more than 40% of parent-carers had considered suicide, she called for “greater awareness, action and change” in Britain’s broken social care system.” Etymology
First attested in Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (1643) in noun sense 1, ostensibly from New Latin suīcīdium, from suī (genitive reflexive pronoun) + -cīdium (“act of killing or murder”), but often believed to have originated in English before entering Latin. Displaced native Middle English seolf-cwale from Old English selfcwalu (literally “self-slaughter”), after which suicide may have been modelled, or calqued (compare manuscript). Noun sense 3 is perhaps by analogy with words like homicide, patricide (see -cide), or, although unlikely, from Medieval Latin suīcīda; see the Etymology section at suīcīdium.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Word family
Related words
Idioms
professional suicide — An action by a person that is expected to ruin their own career.
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/suicide