trucidation

English

Etymology

From Latin trucidatio.

Noun

trucidation (countable and uncountable, plural trucidations)

1. (rare) The act of killing; slaughter or massacre.
   • 1883 May 8, Robert Louis Stevenson, letter to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson, quoted in, “Letters Vol. II”, in The Biographical Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson:

     I loathe the snails, but from loathing to actual butchery, trucidation of multitudes, there is still a step that I hesitate to take.

   • 1938, James Bridie, Babes in the Woods:

     Gillet: They hate me as much as I hate them. And that's saying a good deal. Girdlestone may deal with Walker's … trucidations of a dead and revered language. I shall begin to live!

   • 2008, Perry Anderson, “The Divisions of Cyprus”, in London Review of Books, volume 30, number 8:

     Labour, which had started the disasters of Cyprus by denying it any decolonisation after 1945, had now completed them, abandoning it to trucidation.