matricide
nounEtymology From French matricide, from Latin mātricīda (“person who kills his own mother”) and mātricīdium (“the murder of one's mother”). By surface analysis, matri- + -cide.
1
The killing of one's mother.
- Gerald was imprisoned for matricide: he strangled his mother.
- Here the interest was the more compelling because the case of Orestes was unique—not only because matricide was an almost unknown crime, but also because the gods themselves participate in an action in which the slain mother had herself slain the father of her son.1924, Herbert Weir Smyth, “VIII. Orestea. III: Eumenides”, in Aeschylean Tragedy, page 223:
2
A person who kills his or her mother.
- Nancy was a matricide; it happened four years ago.
- Derived terms
- matricidal