Amicicide

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM
Tue Sep 27 23:37:17 UTC 2005


I've never heard of this term before, but  AM i kuh side sounds okay to me. On the other hand, since  Latin "amicus" stresses the second syllable,  uh MEE kuh side  is probably more "correct" historically.

My preference has the advantage of sounding enough like "amicable" to help explain the meaning.

A now frequent term is "fratricide," which seems to offer no pronunciation difficulties.

JL


Bill & Diana Sowers <bsowers at COX.NET> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Bill & Diana Sowers
Subject: Amicicide
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear ADS-L....

Please forgive the intrusion on your list but I'm wondering if you could
help me. If I'm asking a question that isn't part of your list's purpose
just let me know and I'll bow out gracefully!

I work at the State Library of Kansas in Topeka. Today a patron called in
wanting the pronunciation of a word unfamiliar to any of us.

Amicicide

We can't find the word in any dictionaries we have and its "hit rate" on
google is fairly low. The words appears to be used by military folk to
describe the results of "friendly fire".... "the murder of a friend."

I've checked as many online pronouncing dictionaries as I can locate...
nothing. My thought is that it might have the same flow as infanticide
(accent on second syllable)... but I have no proof.

Any help appreciated!

Bill Sowers
State Library of Kansas... obsessively still working on this though at home


Bill & Diana Sowers -- bsowers at cox.net -- 1746 Fairmont Rd, Topeka KS 66604
Lincoln Co KSGenWeb: http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/lincoln/index.html
Barton Co KSGenWeb: http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/barton/index.html
KS School info for genealogists:
http://www.skyways.org/genweb/education/index.html
Our Family pages: http://www.members.cox.net/bsowers/index.html
Info on us: http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/lincoln/info.htm
DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT KANSAS?
Click here: http://www.kslib.info/ref/quest.html

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