tyrannicide
/tɪˈranɪsʌɪd
/ /tʌɪˈranɪsʌɪd/noun [mass noun]
1The killing of a tyrant: ethical justification of tyrannicide [count noun]: the republic was founded after a tyrannicide...
- For instance, while he states that there are instances when tyrannicide is justified (for example against tyrannical usurpers), killing a prince presumed to be a tyrant is forbidden if ‘the prince is an absolute sovereign.’
- Regarded as a major ancient source on tyranny and tyrannicide, it was the only text attributed to Plutarch known and taught during the fourteenth and much of the fifteenth century.
- The closest it comes to that, perhaps, is Marsilius of Padua's Defensor Pacis, where a defense of tyrannicide is justified as an act to restore civil society to naturally peaceful relations, not to change or revolutionize it.
1.1 [count noun] The killer of a tyrant.The tyrannicides in ancient Greece, the Assassins and the regicides in the Middle Ages were suicide terrorists....
- His objective in writing it was to defend the reputation of Dante, who, rather than according immortality to Cassius and Brutus as tyrannicides, had deemed them murderers and relegated them to the lowest circles of the Inferno.
- Attributed to the famous poet Simonides, it extolled the tyrannicides and their liberation of Athens with the words, ‘A marvelous great light shone upon Athens when Aristogeiton and Harmodios slew Hipparchus.’
Derivatives
tyrannicidal
- I must have bit my lips not to reply that I suddenly felt a strong tyrannicidal urge.
- The tyrannicidal undertaking proves, however, to be more difficult than the young man imagined, also because the private Napoleon is far different from his reputation as a ruthless tyrant.
- By celebrating his tyrannicidal, republic-loving ancestors, Brutus shows his agenda very clearly, and his assassination of Caesar on March 15th, 44BC should come as no surprise to anyone who had bothered to pay attention to the propaganda of his coinage.
Origin
Mid 17th century: from French, from Latin tyrannicida 'killer of a tyrant', tyrannicidium 'killing of a tyrant' (see tyrant, -cide).
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