Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Mass Murder |
Mass MurderNoun1. The wanton killing of many people. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Synonym: Mass MurderSynonym: massacre (n). (additional references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Although genocide does not necessary require actual killing, only acting on a plan to exterminate an ethnic group, mass murder by definition involves killing a large number of people.
R. J. Rummel, a political scientist, coined the word democide to cover mass murder by a state. Some killings commonly viewed as genocide are actually democide or mass murder because they involve killing for political or cultural reasons.
Examples include:
In recent years, terrorists have performed acts of mass murder as acts of intimidation, and to draw attention to their causes. Examples of major terrorist incidents involving mass murder include:
Outside of a political context, the term "mass murder" refers to the killing of several people at the same time. Examples would include shooting several people in the course of a robbery, or setting a crowded nightclub on fire. This is an ambiguous term, similar to serial killing and spree killing. The USA Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a mass murder as: "[involving] the murder of four or more victims at one location, within one event."
The wrongful killing of large numbers of civilians or prisoners during war is called a war crime although it may also be genocide if the proper ethnic motivation is present as in the killings which occurred in the breakaway republics of the former Yugoslavia or in the killing of the Pequot in colonial America.
See also:
Mass murder by the state
Some people also regard the use of atomic weapons against Japan by the United States during the Second World War to have been acts of mass murder.Mass murder by terrorists
It should be noted that these are very much American examples; in fact, the USA is relatively untouched by mass terrorist killings (when compared to Northern Ireland, the Basque region of Spain, Chechnya, Indonesia and the like).Mass murder by individuals
Mass Murderers
Mass murder in warfare
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Mass murder."
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Mickey and Mallory are the best thing to happen to mass murder since Manson. (Natural Born Killers; writing credit: David Veloz) You don't have a good choice, but you have a choice! You're opting for mass murder here, and nothing you say is gonna make that okay! (Buffy the Vampire Slayer; writing credit: Doreen Spicer) He's in for fencing, not for mass murder. (Shannon's Deal; writing credit: John Sayles) You're talking about mass murder, General, not war! (Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb; writing credit: Peter George; Stanley Kubrick) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Human Rights | Iraq | A former officer from the Mukhabarat (Intelligence Service) reported that he participated in a 1998 mass murder at Abu Ghurayb prison following a Revolutionary Command Council directive to "clean out" the country's prisons. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| Speaker | Term | Phrase(s) |
George W. Bush | 2001-2005 | And we will not allow any terrorist or tyrant to threaten civilization with weapons of mass murder. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
mass murder | 82 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "mass murder"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||
French | boucher. (various references) | ||||||||||
Pig Latin | assmay urdermay massmord. (various references) | ||||||||||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-d-e-m-m-r-r-s-s-u" | |
-2 letters: drummers, eardrums. | |
-3 letters: amusers, armures, assumed, assumer, assured, assurer, dammers, drummer, eardrum, masseur, medusas, murders, rammers, rasures, remudas, rummers, summers. | |
-4 letters: amused, amuser, amuses, armers, armure, assume, assure, dammer, darers, demurs, dermas, dreams, drears, druses, duress, durras, madres, marred, marses, masers, massed, medusa, mudras, murder, murras, murres, musers, mussed, rammed, rammer, rasers, rasure. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)4D 61 73 73 4D 75 72 64 65 72 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01001101 01100001 01110011 01110011 00100000 01001101 01110101 01110010 01100100 01100101 01110010 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)M a s s   M u r d e r |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)004D 0061 0073 0073 004D 0075 0072 0064 0065 0072 |
Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)476785852478784707184 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Quotations: Non-fiction 6. Quotations: Speeches 7. Expressions: Internet 8. Translations: Modern | 9. Anagrams 10. Orthography 11. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
