Other forms: murdered, murders, murdering
Murder is killing another person on purpose, and it is the most serious crime in most legal systems. The word is both the crime and the act: a murder took place, he was charged with murder.
English law separates it carefully from manslaughter, and the line is intention — a killing without the intent to kill or seriously harm is manslaughter, not murder. Learners often reach for murder where kill is wanted; kill covers animals, plants, wars and accidents, while murder is a person, deliberately, and unlawfully. Note the verb is regular, and the person is a murderer. Informally the word is also just an exaggeration: the traffic was murder, and my feet are murder in these shoes.
1nounmurderThe crime of deliberately killing another person.~80%
“He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life.”
synonyms: homicide, killing
2verbunlawfullyTo kill somebody deliberately and unlawfully.~18%
“She was murdered in her own house.”
3noununpleasantIn informal speech, something very unpleasant or difficult.~2%
“That hill on a bike is murder.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 22 sentences found in the wild and placed 22 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
murder is a crime.
Old English morthor meant a secret slaying — killing done in the dark and hidden afterwards, which was held to be worse than killing in the open. The secrecy has dropped out of the modern definition, but the word came from it, and the same root gives Latin mors, death, and English mortal.
Proto-Indo-European
*mer-
Proto-Indo-European
*mr̥tro- — killing
Proto-Germanic
*murþrą — death, killing, murder
Proto-West Germanic
*morþr
Old English
morþor — secret slaying, unlawful killing
Middle English
murder
English, today
murder
Built from
From Middle English murder, murdre, mourdre, alteration of earlier murthre (“murder”) (see murther), from Old English morþor (“secret slaying, unlawful killing”) and Old English myrþra (“murder, homicide”), both from Proto-West Germanic morþr, from Proto-Germanic murþrą (“death, killing, murder”), from Proto-Indo-European mr̥tro- (“killing”), from Proto-Indo-European mer-, mor-, mr̥- (“to die”). 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 a doublet of murdrum), from Frankish morþr, murþr (“murder”), from the same gem root, though this may also have been wholly the result of internal development (compare burden, from burthen and spider, from spiþra). crows Attested at least since 1475.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA