liberticide

From French liberticide, coined around the time of the French Revolution. Equivalent to liberty +‎ -cide.

liberticide (not comparable)

1. Causing the destruction of liberty; oppressive, liberticidal
   • 1798, translation of Madame Roland, An Appeal to Impartial Posterity, First American Edition—Corrected, Volume I, A. Van Hook (publisher), pages 151–152:

     […] by aſſembling at her houſe, in ſecret council, the principal chiefs of that conſpiracy, and by keeping up a correſpondence tending to facilitate their liberticide deſigns.

   • 1811 January 26, Thomas Jefferson, letter to M. D. Destutt Tracy, in Thomas Jefferson Randolph (editor), Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume IV, Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley (publishers, 1829), page 166:

     The conservative body you propose might be so constituted, as, while it would be an admirable sedative in a variety of smaller cases, might also be a valuable sentinel and check on the liberticide views of an ambitious individual.

   • 1823, Public Characters of All Nations, Volume II, Sir Richard Phillips and Co. (publisher), page 502:

     M. Labriffe is a member of the Chamber of Deputies, and has, of course, voted for the liberticide laws.

liberticide (countable and uncountable, plural liberticides)

1. The destruction of liberty.
   • 1819, “Ouida” (pseudonym), “An Impeachment of Modern Italy”, in The American Monthly Review of Reviews, Volume 18, Number 5 (1819 November), page 557:

     All that has been done by the state since the revolt of May is liberticide of the most violent character.

   • 1976, Lance Banning, “Jeffersonian Ideology and the French Revolution: A Question of Liberticide at Home”, in Studies in Burke and His Time, Volume 17, Number 1, Texas Tech Press, page 20:

     In the hands of a designing executive, a standing army was the classic instrument of liberticide.

   • 1981, Thomas Szasz, quoted in Margot Joan Fromer, Ethical Issues in Health Care, Mosby, →ISBN, page 399:

     In language and logic we are the prisoners of our premises, just as in politics and law we are prisoners of our rules. Hence we had better pick them well. For if suicide is an illness because it terminates in death, and if the prevention of death by any means necessary is the physician’s therapeutic mandate, then the proper remedy for suicide is liberticide.

2. One who causes the destruction of liberty.
   • 1821, Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Adonais":

     Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride, / The priest, the slave, and the liberticide / Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite / Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified, /

1791. From liberté +‎ -cide

liberticide (plural liberticides)

1. liberticide

   Le tribunal prononce la condamnation à mort des seize carmélites (...) « pour avoir formé des conciliabules contre-révolutionnaires, entretenu des correspondances fanatiques et conservé des écrits liberticides. » (Bernanos)

• “liberticide” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

• “liberticide” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

• crédibilité

• Rhymes: -ide

liberticide

1. feminine plural of liberticida