countermurder

English

Etymology

From counter- +‎ murder.

Noun

countermurder (countable and uncountable, plural countermurders)

1. A murder in response to another murder.
   • 1997, Michael Ignatieff, “The Seductiveness of Moral Disgust”, in The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience, New York NY: Henry Holt and Company, published 1998, →ISBN, page 86:

     I go out with him on tour in his armored car through Bujumbura's ethnically cleansed neighborhoods to talk to the adolescents with the Kalashnikovs and grenades, who for the price of a few beers will firebomb a street. He gets out and confronts them, telling them that the cycle of murder and countermurder must stop, or they will all be swept away.