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Definition of "matricide" [mat•ri•cide]

  • The act of killing one's mother. (noun)
  • One who kills one's mother. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "matricide" in a sentence
  • "But thou shalt not be called the matricide, when thou hast slain her, but dropping this name thou shalt arrive at better things, being styled the slayer of the havoc-dealing"
  • "While we have endured patri/matricide, systematic rape and other atrocities for years."
  • "It is a key significance of the play, I think, that we have this prefigura of a monstrum that does not come to pass -- or not quite the way we expect it to -- in so far as the text is wrought with the undercurrents of Hamlet's potential matricide of Gertrude."