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Definition 2024


eugenocide

eugenocide

English

Alternative forms

Noun

eugenocide (uncountable)

  1. The killing of weak or defective people in an attempt to improve the gene pool.
    • 1971, Intellectual Digest - Volume 2, page 286:
      Practiced on an international scale, eugenocide will do much to prevent lingering, tortuous death by starvation, occasioned so often by overbrowse in underdeveloped nations.
    • 1971, The Scriblerian - Volumes 4-5, page 99:
      It was the "first of the modest schemes for the ecological conservation and harvesting of newborns, which we have come to know as the science of eugenocide."
    • 1994, Richard Sobsey, Violence and Abuse in the Lives of People with Disabilities, ISBN 1557661480, page 115:
      Wolfensberger (1981) refers to the particular effort to eliminate people with disabilities as eugenocide.

Usage notes

While the spelling eugenocide was used when the term was originally coined, the alternate form eugenicide is currently in more common usage.