genocide
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "genocide", 8-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "genocide" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "genocide" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
genocide is aEnglishnoun. It means: The systematic and deliberate destruction of a group of people; typically by killing substantial numbers of them, on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, or nationality. Pronounced /ˈd͡ʒɛnəsaɪd/. It ranks #8,149 in English word frequency. Often confused with genocidal.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | genocide |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈd͡ʒɛnəsaɪd/ |
| Letters | 8 |
| Frequency rank | #8,149 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for genocide is 8 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈd͡ʒɛnəsaɪd/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,149 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 11 likely wrong-spelling variants for genocide, with forms such as "egnocide", "gencoide", and "gennocide". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 1 confusable-pair relationship, "genocidal", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Coined by lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent Raphael Lemkin in 1943 or 1944 in reference to the Armenian Genocide (then known by other names; see: Terminology of the Armenian genocide), massacres of Assyrians (such as the Simele massacre and Seyfo) and the Jew… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is genocide, spelled G-E-N-O-C-I-D-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The systematic and deliberate destruction of a group of people; typically by killing substantial numbers of them, on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, or nationality.
- 2The systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on other grounds.
- 3The systematic suppression of ideas or practices on the basis of cultural or ethnic origin; culturicide.
- 4The elimination of an entire class of monsters by the player.
Etymology
Coined by lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent Raphael Lemkin in 1943 or 1944 in reference to the Armenian Genocide (then known by other names; see: Terminology of the Armenian genocide), massacres of Assyrians (such as the Simele massacre and Seyfo) and the Jewish Holocaust. From the stem of Ancient Greek γένος (génos, “race, kind”) (cognate with Latin gēns (“tribe, clan”), whence genus), corresponding to geno- + -cide (“killing, killer”). Piecewise doublet of gendercide. Compare genticide.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: egnocide,gencoide,gennocide,genoccide,genocdie,genocidde,genocied,genoicde,geoncide,ggenocide,gneocide
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for genocide
Misspelling Variants of "genocide"
Frequency rank: #8,149 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter G in our English index: