policide

English

Etymology

Coined based on Ancient Greek πόλις (pólis, “city; state”) and the suffix -cide.

Noun

policide

1. The intentional destruction of a nation.
2. The intentional destruction of political activity in a society.
   • 2010, Steve J. Stern, Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Question in Democratic Chile, 1989–2006:

     In Chile the project of policide—annihilating the Left and more broadly, Center and Left cultural understandings of politics as a process of popular mobilization, via massive killing and abduction of real and alleged Left activists, complemented by additional layers of persecution and fright heaped on dissidents of any political stripe—yielded issues of comprehensibility and representation similar to those in classic cases of genocide.

Anagrams

• poecilid, policied