genocide

genocide — noun

1. A serious crime under international law in which people who share the same natio

1.nounC1
Definition

A serious crime under international law in which people who share the same nationality, race, or religion are deliberately killed as part of an organised effort to wipe out that group entirely.

Example

The United Nations sent investigators to collect evidence of genocide in the war-torn region.

collocation: evidence of genocide

Gabriela's grandfather escaped the genocide and later wrote a book about his experience.

Common collocations
  • commit genocide
  • genocide against
  • victims of genocide
  • genocide prevention
  • act of genocide
Synonyms
  • mass murder

    Broader term; mass murder does not require the intent to destroy a specific national or ethnic group

  • ethnic cleansing

    Involves forced removal of a group from an area; overlaps with genocide but does not necessarily require mass killing

  • massacre

    Refers to a single event of killing many people, not a systematic campaign over time

Grammar Patterns

genocide against [group]

commit genocide

act of genocide

Usage Note

Frequently used in legal and political contexts. The subject is usually a government, army, or organised group carrying out the killing, not an individual acting alone.

Common Mistakes

The earthquake caused a genocide in the coastal towns.
The earthquake caused a terrible disaster in the coastal towns.
genocide is a deliberate human act, not a natural event.
Three people were killed in a genocide.
Three people were killed in a mass shooting.
genocide involves large-scale destruction of a group, not a small number of victims.

Word family

  • genocidal
    adjectiveC1

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

All four terms describe large-scale killing, but they differ in scope and legal meaning. Genocide is the narrowest and most serious legal term: it requires proof of intent to partly or completely destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such. Mass murder is broader and purely descriptive — it refers to killing many people at once, with no requirement of group-targeted intent. Ethnic cleansing involves forcing a group out of a territory through violence, fear, or deportation; while it often overlaps with genocide, it can happen without mass killing. Massacre describes a single violent event in which many defenceless people are killed, without the systematic, planned dimension of genocide. For example, a wartime massacre of villagers is not necessarily genocide, but the same killings become genocide if they are part of a deliberate campaign to destroy the villagers' ethnic group.

genocide ↗mass murderethnic cleansingmassacre ↗

Common collocations

Nouns

Verbs

Phrases

  • act of genocide
  • crime of genocide
  • genocide against

Adjectives

Etymology

GreekLatinEnglishPolish

The word genocide was created in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, to describe the Nazi plan to destroy European Jews. He combined the Greek word genos (meaning 'race' or 'people') with the Latin suffix -cide (meaning 'killing'), following the pattern of words like homicide and suicide. The term was later adopted into international law through the United Nations Genocide Convention in 1948.