English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Blend of eugenics +‎ genocide

Noun

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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, page 115:
      Wolfensberger (1981) refers to the particular effort to eliminate people with disabilities as eugenocide.

Usage notes

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