vaccicide

English

Etymology

Formed in English as vacci- (“cow”) +‎ -cide (“killing”). Compare the earlier French vaccicide (“a killer of cows”). First attested in 1865..

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈvæksɪsaɪd/

• Audio (UK)

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Noun

vaccicide (uncountable)

1. (rare) The killing of a cow.
   • 1887, David John Falconer Newall, The Highlands of India II: Field Sports and Travel in India, sect. i, ch. iv, p. 49:

     Cow killing in Cashmere is punished as a worse crime than homicide! Travellers to Cashmere in those days — entering the valley by the Shupeyon route — will perhaps remember the skeleton of a man hanging in rusty chains from a prominent bough of the first large tree which met the eye on emerging from the Heerpore pass. That wretch was hanged for vaccicide…a terrible example of Maharajah Golaub Sing’s Draconian laws!

   • 1900, Ashley Carus-Wilson, Irene Petrie: Missionary to Kashmir (3rd ed., 1901), ch. xi, p. 249:

     He has a great reverence for the bovine species, for Apis is sacred to the Kashmiri…and in Kashmir “vaccicide” is a capital crime.

   • 1987, Alfred Phillips, The Lawyer and Society, p. 127:

     Anthony Burgess is not confessing to the crime of culpable vaccicide. Is he then using jargon? He has no need to give a show of learning; he might admit, though, that the sayers of “vaccicidal,” if they existed, would be using jargon.

Translations

killing of a cow

• Finnish: lehmän tappo