In the English language, terms for types of killing often end in the suffix -cide.
All of these are considered types of homicide.
Euthanasia is the practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering.
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse committed with the necessary intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisdiction. This state of mind may, depending upon the jurisdiction, distinguish murder from other forms of unlawful homicide, such as manslaughter. Manslaughter is killing committed in the absence of malice, such as in the case of voluntary manslaughter brought about by reasonable provocation, or diminished capacity. Involuntary manslaughter, where it is recognized, is a killing that lacks all but the most attenuated guilty intent, recklessness.
A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings, massacres, or enforced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in which they are formed by an insurgency, domestic or foreign governments actively participate in, support, or ignore the death squad's activities.
Homicide is an act in which a person causes the death of another person. A homicide requires only a volitional act, or an omission, that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no intent to cause harm. It is separate from suicide.
Xenocide (1991) is the third book in the Ender's Game series, a science fiction series by American author Orson Scott Card. Published during a period of increasing globalization and heightened awareness of cultural differences, Xenocide explores themes of communication, xenophobia, and the potential dangers of advanced technology.
Ali Hassan Majid al-Tikriti, was an Iraqi military officer and politician under Saddam Hussein who served as defence minister, interior minister, and chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. He was also the governor of Kuwait during much of the 1990–91 Gulf War.
Extrajudicial punishment is a punishment for an alleged crime or offense which is carried out without legal process or supervision by a court or tribunal through a legal proceeding.
Uxoricide is the killing of one's own wife. It can refer to the act itself or the person who carries it out. It can also be used in the context of the killing of one's own girlfriend. Conversely, the killing of a husband or boyfriend is called mariticide.
A murder–suicide is an act where an individual intentionally kills one or more people before killing themselves. The combination of murder and suicide can take various forms:
Femicide or feminicide is a term for the murdering of females, often because of their gender. Femicide can be perpetrated by either sex but is more often committed by men. This is most likely due to unequal power between men and women as well as harmful gender roles, stereotypes, or social norms.
Human rights in Mexico refers to moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behaviour in Mexico, and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international law. The problems include torture, extrajudicial killings and summary executions, police repression, sexual murder, and, more recently, news reporter assassinations.
Androcide is a term for the hate crime of systematically killing males because of their sex. Not all murders of men are androcide. Androcides often happen during war or genocide. Men and boys are not always solely targeted because of abstract or ideological hatred. Rather, male civilians are often targeted during warfare as a way to remove those considered to be potential combatants, and during genocide as a way to destroy the entire community.
Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th century BC.
An extrajudicial killing is the deliberate killing of a person without the lawful authority granted by a judicial proceeding. It typically refers to government authorities, whether lawfully or unlawfully, targeting specific people for death, which in authoritarian regimes often involves political, trade union, dissident, religious and social figures. The term is typically used in situations that imply the human rights of the victims have been violated; deaths caused by legal police actions or legal warfighting on a battlefield are generally not included, even though military and police forces are often used for killings seen by critics as illegitimate. The label "extrajudicial killing" has also been applied to organized, lethal enforcement of extralegal social norms by non-government actors, including lynchings and honor killings.
Avunculicide is the act of killing an uncle. The word can also refer to someone who commits such an act. The term is derived from the Latin words avunculus meaning "maternal uncle" and caedere meaning "to cut down" or "to kill". Edmunds suggests that in mythology avunculicide is a substitute for parricide. The killing of a nephew is a nepoticide.
In the United States, the law for murder varies by jurisdiction. In many US jurisdictions there is a hierarchy of acts, known collectively as homicide, of which first-degree murder and felony murder are the most serious, followed by second-degree murder and, in a few states, third-degree murder, which in other states is divided into voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary manslaughter such as reckless homicide and negligent homicide, which are the least serious, and ending finally in justifiable homicide, which is not a crime. However, because there are at least 52 relevant jurisdictions, each with its own criminal code, this is a considerable simplification.
Foeticide, or feticide, is the act of killing a fetus, or causing a miscarriage. Definitions differ between legal and medical applications, whereas in law, feticide frequently refers to a criminal offense, in medicine the term generally refers to a part of an abortion procedure in which a provider intentionally induces fetal demise to avoid the chance of an unintended live birth, or as a standalone procedure in the case of selective reduction.
Manslaughter is a crime in the United States. Definitions can vary among jurisdictions, but manslaughter is invariably the act of causing the death of another person in a manner less culpable than murder. Three types of unlawful killings constitute manslaughter. First, there is voluntary manslaughter which is an intentional homicide committed in "sudden heat of passion" as the result of adequate provocation. Second, there is the form of involuntary manslaughter which is an unintentional homicide that was committed in a criminally negligent manner. Finally, there is the form of involuntary manslaughter which is an unintentional homicide that occurred during the commission or attempted commission of an unlawful act which does not amount to a felony.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to death: