Dictionaries › English

manslaughter

Pronunciation: /ˈmænˌslɔːtə/

The English word “manslaughter” has 2 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. The slaying of a human being.
  2. The unlawful killing of a human, either in negligence or incidentally to the commission of some unlawful act, but without specific malice, or upon a sudden excitement of anger; considered less culpable than murder, but more culpable than justifiable homicide.

Etymology

From Middle English manslaȝter, manslauter, equivalent to man + slaughter, or taken as an adaptation of Old English mansliht (“murder; killing of a person”), from mann (“person”) + sliht (“killing”), see manslaught. Cognate with Scots manslauchter (“homicide”). Compare also Old Frisian monslaga (“murder”).

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “manslaughter” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.