Definition of "populicide"

In 1793, the capital vvas menaced vvith the dreadful ſcourge of famine, and if vve are to believe ſome ſpeculative men, this originated in a populicide conſpiracy, on the part of the then exiſting government.A use of the French word in an English text.]

, “Garin”, in Biographical Anecdotes of the Founders of the French Republic, and of Other Eminent Characters, who have Distinguished Themselves in the Progress of the Revolution, volume II, London: […] R. Phillips, and sold by Mr. [Joseph] Johnson, […]; and Mr. [John] Debrett, […], page 242

Less extensively mischievous, tyrannicide would be less flagitious than populicide; murder of one, though he were a Secretary of State; or—but imagination must stop here—than murder of a promiscuous multitude of unarmed men, women, and children.This is the earliest attestation of the word recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary.

1824 December 9 (date written), Jeremy Bentham, “ To the Catholic Association”, in Luke O’Sullivan, Catherine Fuller, editors, The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, volume 12 (July 1824 to June 1828), Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, published 2006, footer 5, page 73

[S]ome of them, the worst of all, take their stand in the highest ranks of society, rave in the senate, bluster in the council of the nation, shine at courts, and everywhere proclaim falsehood to be truth, vice to be virtue, apostacy[sic – meaning apostasy] to be consistency, populicide to be patriotism; and while devoting the whole of their energies to blind, corrupt, and enslave mankind, they pretend to be the instructors, the monitors, the benefactors of the human race!

1844 May, “Art. I. Historical Sketches of Statesmen who Flourished in the Time of George III. &c. Third Series. By Henry Lord Brougham. London: Knight & Co. [book review]”, in The Eclectic Review, volume XV (New Series), London: Thomas Ward & Co., […]; Edinburgh: W. Oliphant and Son; Glasgow: James MacLehose, page 502

I mourn for Mr. [Abraham] Lincoln, as man should mourn the fate of man, when it is sudden and supreme. I hate regicide as I do populicide—deeply, if phrenzied; more deeply, if deliberate.

1865 May 2, John Ruskin, “Work and Wages. To the Editor of ‘The Pall Mall Gazette.’”, in [Alexander Dundas Ogilvy Wedderburn], editor, Arrows of the Chace: Being a Collection of Scattered Letters Published Chiefly in the Daily Newspapers,—1840–1880 […], volume II (Letters on Politics, Economy, and Miscellaneous Matters), Orpington, Kent [London]: George Allen, […], published 1880, part [ii] (Letters on Political Economy), page 78

M. [Joseph] Salvador's reprinted treatise […] is a curious but not very enlivening book, in which […] arguments to prove that the Crucifixion was, in the first place, an act of deicide, then of populicide, then of legicide, and many other strange things are gathered together with a kind of serious simplicity which, at any rate for a time, supplies the want of practical force, method, and style.

1881 June 4, “French Literature”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, volume LI, number 1,336, London: […] Spottiswoode & Co., […], page 733, column 1

Chancellor [Georg] von Hertling's speech in the Reichstag this week was the most cynical utterance yet made by the German populicides. Under the thin coating of phrases regarding universal peace principles appears the ravenous and murderous policy that is working its will in Russia.Referring to people who commit populicide.]

Myers, “Indian Appropriations”, in Congressional Record: Containing the Proceedings and Debates of the Second Session of the Sixty-fifth Congress of the United States of America (United States Senate), volume LVI, part 4, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 25 March 1918, page 4020, column 2

Finally, Philippe de Villiers announced that a group of lawyers would work out a petition asking the United Nations to recognize the "Vendéen populicide as a crime against humanity."

1995, Stephen Laurence Kaplan, “The Vendée: Trope and Idée-Force”, in Farewell, Revolution: Disputed Legacies: France, 1789/1989, Ithaca, N.Y.; London: Cornell University Press, book 1 (Framing the Bicentennial), page 109