pullicide
English
A polecat commits a pullicide.
Etymology
From Latin pullus + -icide.
Noun
pullicide (uncountable) (rare)
- The killing of a chicken.
- 1866, Horace Walpole, “1338. To Sir Horace Mann”, in Peter Cunningham, editor, The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford, volume 5, London: Henry G. Bohn, page 282:
- Verily, I put myself in mind of Gay's sick fox, who, after preaching to his young kin against pullicide, cries, […] A chicken, too, might do me good.
- 1922, Charles Robert Leslie FLetcher, Edmond Warre, D.D., C.B., C.V.O., Sometime Headmaster and Provost of Eton College, J. Murray, page 223:
- […] was also given to "gallicide," "pullicide," and every kind of 'cide, and a good deal of Warre's correspondence is full of apologies for the misdeeds of both dogs.
- 2011, David C. Urban, “The Use of Exempla from Cicero to Pliny the Younger”, in Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations, University of Pennsylvania, page 125:
- In one of the more broadly comic touches, for example, Cicero illustrates the Stoic claim that all crimes are equal by equating parricide with untimely pullicide: "And the man who strangles a poultry-cock when it is not necessary does no less wrong than the man who strangles his father"
Synonyms
- gallicide