reginicide

See also: réginicide

English

Etymology

From Latin rēgīna (“queen”) +‎ -icide.

Noun

reginicide (countable and uncountable, plural reginicides) (rare)

1. The killing of a queen.
   • 1844, Albany Poyntz [pseudonym; Catherine Gore], “My Creole Cousin”, in Bentley’s Miscellany, volume XV, London: Richard Bentley, […], pages 579–580:

     One Sunday print, more daring than the rest, placarded the blank walls in the metropolis with pea-green hand-bills, promising an extra sheet, to contain the biography of the supposed assassin of the Queen; to which a rival responded by an advertisement in Gothic characters a foot high, of “Confession of the Assassin.” / If I did not commit reginicide, I was uncommonly near committing felo-de-se!

   • a. 1859, George Templeton Strong, edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, The Diary of George Templeton Strong: The Turbulent Fifties: 1850–1859, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, published 1952, page 473:

     Had Edward Oxford been hanged for shooting at Queen Victoria in 1840, his death would have stirred up scores of silly shopboys to regicide (or reginicide), merely from the inscrutable passion for notoriety; for being thought about and talked about—that has much power over man’s vanity.

   • 1975, Edward O. Wilson, “Social Symbioses”, in Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, part II, “Social Mechanisms”, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, published 2000, →ISBN, section “Temporary Social Parasitism in Insects”:

     Since all the Epimyrma species have already entered a permanently inquiline state, with total dependence on the host workers, it would seem an error to exterminate the host queens, which are, after all, the source of the labor force. However, the Epimyrma habit of reginicide cannot be written off simply as an unfortunate vestige from an earlier time when the Epimyrma ancestors were temporary parasites.

   • 1977, The Spectator, page 28, column 3:

     He is, in any case, extremist enough to have decided to assassinate the Queen, out of frustration with his ‘token life, token education, token job, token family.’ He impresses Percy with his proposal to restore the ‘Ancient Kingdom of Northumbria’ and persuades him to help with the ‘reginicide.’

   • 1987, Hugh A. Mulligan, “Language That the Strangers Never Knew”, in John McCarthy, editor, The Best of Irish Wit and Wisdom, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, →ISBN, page 299:

     Others, like the Americans and the Australians, may be guilty of reginicide of the Queen’s English, but in Ireland the old girl is simply deposed and sent into exile.

   • 1997, Jon Speelman, “‘Reginicide’”, in Jon Speelman’s Best Games, part II, “Four Themes”, London: Batsford Books, published 2014, →ISBN:

     The queen sacrifice – the triumph of energy over matter – has always appealed to me in the abstract; and over the years I probably have had recourse to this weapon rather more often than I should. Nevertheless, it was quite a coincidence when in the British Championship in Torquay 1982, I sent no less than three Ladies to the Guillotine in just eleven games. / From their blood I reaped three points, which – combined with other acts of barbarism – sufficed for eight points from 11 games, clear second a point behind Tony Miles. / Here are those three ‘reginicides’.

   • 2000, Ed Glinert, Literary London: A Street by Street Exploration of the Capital’s Literary Heritage, Penguin Group, published 2007, →ISBN:

     Chelsea Old Town Hall, King’s Road at Chelsea Manor Street Oscar Wilde is still depicted in one of the murals in the hall, but only just. In 1914 a councillor proposed a motion urging that the poet be removed on the grounds that the Town Hall was not built ‘for the exhibition of criminals’ (see the Central Criminal Court, p. 73). Another councillor pointed out that other figures featured elsewhere in the display, such as George Eliot (adultery) and Henry VIII (reginicide), were none too holy themselves.

   • 2016, Hélène Becquet, “La mort de la reine”, in La mort du prince: De l’Antiquité à nos jours (Le temps de l’histoire), Presses universitaires de Provence, →ISBN, page 307:

     This article aims to examine the death of Marie-Antoinette from a political point of view by focusing on the concept of reginicide, defined as the execution or the murder of a queen consort in a hereditary monarchy.

Coordinate terms

• regicide

Related terms

• Regina
• vicereine

Translations

the killing of a queen

• French: réginicide m
• German: Königinmord m