murder

Meanings

Noun

• The crime of deliberately killing another person without justification.
• The act of deliberate killing of another person or other being without justification, especially with malice aforethought.
• The commission of an act which abets the commission of a crime the commission of which causes the death of a human.
• Something terrible to endure.
• A group of crows;

Verb

• To deliberately kill (a person or persons) without justification, especially with malice aforethought.
• To defeat decisively.
• To kick someone's ass or chew someone out (used to express one’s anger at somebody).
• To botch or mangle.
• To devour, ravish.

Related

Similar words

• homicide, manslaughter, assassination
• flock
• assassinate, kill, massacre, slaughter
• thrash, trounce, wipe the floor with
• kill

Origin

• From Middle English murder, murdre, mourdre, alteration of earlier murthre (see murther), from Old English morþor and Old English myrþra, both from Proto-Germanic *murþrą, from Proto-Indo-European *mr̥tro-, from Proto-Indo-European *mer-, *mor-, *mr̥-. Akin to Gothic 𐌼𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌸𐍂 ("murder"), Old High German mord ("murder"), Old Norse morð ("murder"), Old English myrþrian ("to murder") and morþ.
• The -d- in the Middle English form may have been influenced in part by Anglo-Norman murdre, from Old French murdre, from Medieval Latin murdrum (whence the English murdrum), from Frankish *morþr, *murþr, from the same Germanic root, though this may also have been wholly the result of internal development (compare burden, from burthen).