asinicide

From Latin asinus (“donkey, ass; idiot”) +‎ -icide. In Laura Cereta (1997; see quotation), via nonce Latin asinicīda.

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asinicide (uncountable) (very rare, chiefly humorous)

1. The killing of an idiot.
   • 1898 May 13, “Editorial and Clippings”, in The Griggs Courier, volume 16, number 18, Cooperstown, Griggs County, N.D., →ISSN, →OCLC, front page, columns 1–2:

     The Sheldon Progress pays the following touching tribute to the Fessenden editors: The citizens of Fessenden held a mass meeting in the butcher shop and organized a cemetery association with “Sandy” Smith and Editors Maskery and Stickley on the board. There can no longer be any doubt as to the purpose that boneyard is intended for. Maskery and Stickley are going to commit justifiable asinicide and send their ’steemed contemporary, Mark Hunt, to join “Iconoclast” Brann—and Cicero—and Rousseau—and all the ancient and modern thought evolvers who contributed to the editorial columns of the Free Press. Then may the La Moure Chronicle ask what will we do without “this most picturesque figure in North Dakota journalism, Marcus Hunt—so opulent in self esteem: so rich in lore; so full of wise saws and modern instances; so full, too, of prunes and verbosity!

   • 1926 July 22, “The Crow’s-Nest”, in The Royal Gazette and Colonist Daily, volume 6, number 172, Hamilton, Bermuda, →OCLC, page 3:

     “The three kings of Washington Irving,” broke in Beano. “Bah, I guessed what you were driving at long ago, but hoped you’d have the good grace to sheer off. This is no weather for a lecture on history. So, if you’re found murdered here, blame yourself. If I’d been Carter, and Chard and Waters had held forth as you’re doing, I’d have let them fight it out over the ambergris or a greased pig; and would then have potted the winner for the sake of quiet. You can bet their row happened in July. July is the month for electric storms and brain-storms. There should be specially lenient penalties for July misdemeanours such as manslaughter in defence of one’s eardrums and asinicide.” / Crow smiled indulgently. “I’m glad to know how you feel about it. I was hoping for the best. It will save me from polluting the channel off Market Wharf with my mortal remains and thereby annoying the police.” / “What the⸺” / “Now don’t be profane or the Chamber of Commerce will wash out your mouth with sweetly lavendered soap. You approve asinicide. Good. I am inviting euthanasia by your steady hand and true midbrovian eye. Better weakly to bleed to death than to melt to extinction week by week. Prepare your lethal weapon while I hobnob for the last time with cabbages and kings.”

   • 1937 January 14, James Pontifex, “Threat of Asinicide”, in Chicago Daily Tribune, volume XCVI, number 12, Chicago, Ill., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 12, column 3:

     The Professor of Logic next door has been making the heavens blush with the brimstone profanity of his enquiries as to what-the-polysyllabic-Hades else we could think it was open for. I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown as the result of having during the last fortnight no less than eighteen times been (this is growing into a German sentence), by mail, telephone and personal call, “contacted.” Next time it happens, justifiable homicide (or asinicide) will be enacted (by me).

   • 2021 December 11, Kenkei (@Kenkei_), Twitter‎^[1], archived from the original on 6 May 2025:

     Asinicide shouldn't be considered a crime, right?😂

2. The killing (including by self) of an ass or donkey.
   • 1901 December 9, “Charleston Racing Will Have the Call. Not the Slightest Danger that the New Orleans Winter Gambling Game Will Attempt Any Ex Parte Outlawry. Charleston Programme for Three Days.”, in The Brooklyn Citizen, volume XXX, number 160, Brooklyn, N.Y., →OCLC, page 4:

     The fact that there are two racing associations in the Mississippi Valley, the old Western Turf Congress and the new Western Jockey Club—both weaker and more offensive in smell than dish and ditch-water combined—are struggling for ascendency with a prospect of mutual asinicide, helps along the Bush inspiration, and it will be very easy to frighten horsemen from Charleston, and equally easy, when the scare had become effective, to remove the ban by a wave of the Bush digitals, altogether in the same manner as when the attempt was made to interfere with Bennings and Brother-in-Law Howland.

   • 1906 December 21, “Fayetteville Mule, Tired of Life, Ends All in Creek”, in The Daily Industrial News, volume II, number 64, Greensboro, N.C., page 3, column 2:

     Last night a mule belonging to Maria Long, a negress, in the northern part of town, went wild from some cause. The mule kicked the stable all to pieces, jumped out of the wreck, ran to Cross creek, jumped in and drowned himself. Was it a case of asinicide?

   • 1997, Laura Cereta, “Dialogue on the Death of an Ass”, in Diana Robin, transl., Laura Cereta: Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe), Chicago, Ill.; London: The University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 197:

     For this reason this rustic little destroyer of humanity deserves to suffer not only the censure of the Porcian and Semprorian laws, but also the axes of the tribunes’ prison as well, since he would have organized and presented everything aptly and wittily enough had he, being ill-advised in his asinicide,³⁴ left those whips and burning wounds out of the revision of his story.

     34. Cereta’s neologism “asinicida,” which is not attested in the ancient authors, is analogous to the parricida (murder of a parent). This passage is where Laura of course makes the reference and comparison to Apuleius’ tale of the cruel boy and his readiness to kill the ass he’s responsible for explicit (Apuleius, Met. 7.17–24).

• asinary
• asinine

From Latin asinus (“ass, donkey”) +‎ -cide.

asinicide m (plural asinicides)

1. (very rare) the killing of an ass or donkey
   • 1825, Édouard C-M., L’Ânesse et la lune, ou le Procès pour rire, drame en un acte et en vers [The [Female] Donkey and the Moon, or The Trial for Laughs, Drama in One Act and in Verse], 2nd edition, Nîmes: […] J. B. Guibert, […], page 27:

     Que diront l’Amérique et l’Afrique et l’Asie, / Lorsqu’on verra la nuit, sans Lune et sans éclat, / Annoncer aux humains un si noir attentat? / Certes, nul ne pensait qu’un animal impie / Dût porter sur la Lune une dent ennemie, / Vous pourriez pardonner le plus grand des forfaits! / Et, de tout l’univers méprisant les regrets, / Ou, tremblant à l’aspect d’un juste asinicide, / Vous ne frapperiez pas le baudet lunicide!....

     What will America and Africa and Asia say, / When we see the night, without the Moon and without brightness, / Announce to humans such a black attack? / Certainly, no one thought that an impious animal / Had to carry an enemy tooth to the Moon, / You could forgive the greatest of crimes! / And, of all the universe despising regrets, / Or, trembling at the sight of a just asinicide, / You would not strike the lunicidal donkey!....

   • 1867 September 21, “Petite chronique [Little Chronicle]”, in Le Soleil [The Sun], number 699, page [4] (Gallica, RetroNews), column 2:

     Le sieur R… était propriétaire de la bête, que la nuit précédente un inconnu avait éventrée à coups de couteau. L’auteur de cet asinicide est resté inconnu, mais il est activement recherché.

     Mr. R… was the owner of the animal, which the previous night a stranger had disembowelled with a knife. The author of this asinicide remains unknown, but he is actively sought.

   • 1993, Giordano Bruno, translated by [unknown], Œuvres complètes :Expulsion de la bête triomphante (dialogue 1) [Expelling the Triumphant Beast (Dialogue 1)], Les Belles Lettres, →ISBN, pages 356 and 562:

     […] comment le e et le d, par l’ajout d’un timon et la scission du d par le milieu, peuvent représenter fort aisément le dieu de Lampsaque, qui par jalousie commit un asinicide ²⁷ ; […] 27. Il s’agit de Priape. La légende de l’asinicide est rapportée par les auteurs de catastérismes à propos des deux étoiles de la constellation du Cancer, les Anons, voir Eratosthène, Catast. 11; […]

     […] how the e and the d, by adding a pole and dividing the d in the middle, can very easily represent the god of Lampsacus, who out of jealousy committed an asinicide ²⁷; […] 27. This is Priapus. The legend of the asinicide is reported by the authors of catasterisms about the two stars of the constellation of Cancer, the Anons, see Eratosthenes, Catast. 11; […]

   • 2012 July 16, 🌻🦊Coyote Garou🦊🌻 (@PomPomCayoti), Twitter‎^[2], archived from the original on 6 May 2025:

     @GreParis euh oui, @theia__,sa marotte c'est l'asinicide ---> @3_Caballeros @Laure_Mezarigue @minutepap @funnymarla @__Yusaku

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

For quotations using this term, see Citations:asinicide.