Definition
Parricide is the act of killing a close family member, particularly a parent, and by extension, the person who commits such a killing. In its narrowest traditional legal sense, parricide referred specifically to the murder of one's father. In broader usage — both historical and modern — the term extends to the killing of a mother, grandparent, or other near ancestor.
Parricide functions primarily as a descriptive label rather than a distinct statutory crime in most common law jurisdictions. Modern criminal codes typically subsume parricide under general homicide statutes, with familial relationship addressed as an aggravating factor at sentencing rather than as a separate offense.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Someone who kills a relative, especially a parent; also, someone who commits treason.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Properly, one who murders one's own father; in a wider sense, one who murders one's father, mother, or any ancestor. Also, the act or crime of committing such a killing.
The legal and common definitions are largely consistent, but a notable gap exists in scope. Legal usage has historically anchored parricide to the killing of a father or ancestor, while common usage has drifted toward any close relative — and in some contexts, toward treason (a usage rooted in Roman and civilian law, where killing the "father" of the state carried parricide's symbolic weight). Researchers encountering the term in non-common-law sources should be alert to this broader political meaning.
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Common Confusion
Parricide, patricide, and matricide are frequently used interchangeably but carry distinct meanings: patricide is the killing of one's father specifically; matricide, of one's mother. Parricide in the Roman and civilian traditions was the broader category encompassing both, along with the killing of other near relatives. In English common law sources, parricide most often appears in its narrowest sense — the killing of a father — and the civilian breadth of the term is rarely carried over. Researchers using historical English sources should not assume parricide encompasses maternal killings unless the text makes that explicit.
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Why It Matters in Research
Parricide is a term that reveals more about the legal tradition generating the source than about any fixed legal definition. A researcher's first task is identifying the tradition — common law, Roman law, or civilian — because the scope of the term shifts substantially across them.
In English common law, parricide never achieved the status of a distinct statutory offense. Rapalje & Lawrence state the point directly: English law distinguishes in no respect between parricide and simple murder. This means corpus searches in English legal materials will rarely surface parricide as a charge or verdict category. It appears instead in commentary, moral discourse, and comparative passages drawing on Roman or continental sources.
In Roman and civilian law, by contrast, parricide (parricidium) was a formal crime with its own procedural history and famously severe penalties, including the poena cullei — being sewn into a sack with animals and drowned. Researchers working in natural law treatises, early modern comparative jurisprudence, or any source engaging the civil law tradition will encounter this fuller version of the term. Conflating it with the narrow English common law usage produces significant misreadings.
Aggravation in modern law: Although parricide has no independent statutory life in most American or English jurisdictions, the familial relationship it describes remains legally significant. Most contemporary homicide statutes or sentencing guidelines treat the killing of a parent as an aggravating circumstance. Corpus searches for parricide in modern case law will typically retrieve older sources or academic commentary; the operative legal category in current materials is usually "first-degree murder" or "aggravated murder."
Cross-corpus traps: Rapalje & Lawrence's entry contains what appears to be a compositor's error — text relating to advowsons and parsons is spliced into the parricide entry. Researchers using digitized versions of that source should treat the entry with caution and verify against the original text.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical legal dictionaries present parricide with notable consistency but in abbreviated form. Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary define the term identically — the crime of killing one's father, or the person guilty of doing so — without venturing into the civilian tradition or the question of broader familial scope. Anderson's Dictionary of Law deflects entirely to the homicide entry, a reminder that the term carries no independent doctrinal weight under Anglo-American law.
Rapalje & Lawrence is the most substantively useful of the four, explicitly contrasting English law's treatment of parricide as equivalent to simple murder against "ancient laws" — almost certainly a reference to Roman law — that would have treated it as a distinct and graver category. This is a genuine point of comparative legal history, worth following when the entry is read free of its garbled text.
What none of the historical dictionaries address is the extension of parricide to non-paternal killings. A researcher relying solely on these sources would come away with an artificially narrow definition and no awareness of the term's role in civilian jurisprudence, Roman legal history, or the political metaphor of killing the "father of the state."
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Jurisdictional Note
No American jurisdiction currently recognizes parricide as a distinct statutory offense separate from general homicide. Some civil law jurisdictions in continental Europe and Latin America — drawing on the Roman and Napoleonic traditions — retain parricide as a named aggravated offense. Researchers working in comparative law or examining the laws of Quebec, Louisiana, or jurisdictions with a civilian heritage should verify whether the term carries operative legal force in those specific systems.
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