Genocide definition
The systematic and widespread extermination or attempted extermination of a national, racial, religious, or ethnic group.
noun
The systematic destruction of a national or ethnic group, specif. by means of execution or murder.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun
Singular:
genocide
Plural:
genocidesOrigin of genocide
- Greek genos race genə- in Indo-European roots –cide
From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
- Coined in 1943 by Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), a Polish-Jewish legal scholar, to describe what the Turkish government perpetrated against the Armenian people between about 1915 and 1918: the Armenian Genocide. From the stem of Ancient Greek γένος (génos, “race, kind”) or Latin gēns (“tribe, clan”) (as in genus), + -cide (“killing, killer”).
From Wiktionary