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femicide

fem·i·cide/ˈfɛ.məˌsaɪd/noun

femicide is a noun meaning “The killing of a woman or girl, originally (figurative) with reference to loss of virtue but now usually (law) specifically because of their sex or…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-E-M-I-C-I-D-E and has 3 syllables (fem·i·cide), and it appears about once in every 15 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of femicide is femicides.

What does femicide mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The killing of a woman or girl, originally (figurative) with reference to loss of virtue but now usually (law) specifically because of their sex or gender and especially such a killing by a man motivated by misogyny.

  2. 2

    rareA person who commits such an act.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce femicide?

  • US /ˈfɛ.məˌsaɪd/
  • UK /ˈfɛ.mɪˌsaɪd/

Femicide has 3 syllables, split fem·i·cide in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-femicide.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of femicide

  • femicides plural
  • feminicide

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is femicide?

Femicide appears about once in every 15 million words in written English, the 115,751st most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Femicide in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense killing of women:

LanguageWords
Frenchféminicide, fémicide, gynocide
GermanFemizid, Frauenmord
Portuguesefeminicídio, femicídio
Spanishfemicidio, feminicidio

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does femicide come from?

From fem- + -icide, ultimately derived from Latin fēmina (“woman”), after the model of homicide, genocide, etc.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).