murder
noun · verb
Simple meaning
The crime of killing a person unlawfully.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
murderSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmɝdɚ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
uncountable
The crime of killing a person unlawfully, especially with predetermination.
(uncountable, law, in jurisdictions which use the felony murder rule) The act of committing or abetting a crime that results in the killing of a person, regardless of intent, and even if the committer or abettor is not the one who killed the person: felony murder.
uncountableused as a predicative noun
Something terrible to endure.
verb
To illegally kill (a person or persons) with intent, especially with predetermination
To botch or mangle.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The crime of killing a person unlawfully, especially with predetermination.
Used this way, murder is a specialist word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It turns up most in technical or specialist writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Clinical and detached
Where it naturally appears
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use murder
- “The mafia boss ordered his enemies murdered.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
A criminal who commits homicide (who performs the unlawful premeditated killing of another human being).
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Someone suspected of committing murder.
Conviction for murder.
An indictment charging someone with murder.
An indictment charging someone with murder.
A narrative about a murder and how the murderer is discovered.
Systematic killing of a racial or cultural group.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- murderernoun
- homicidenoun
- kidnappingnoun
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.