[f. prec. Cf. F. se suicider.]
1. intr. and refl. To commit suicide.
1841. Lever, O’Malley, xxxii. 171. Here was I enacting Romeo for three mortal days—soliloquizing, half-suiciding.
1847. Mrs. Carlyle, Lett. & Mem. (1883), II. 18. The expediency … of suiciding myself is no longer a question with me.
1881. Philad. Rec., No. 3443. 1 Isaiah McNeal, aged 60, suicided at Conyngham on Wednesday.
a. 1890. Sir R. Burton, in Lady Burton, Life (1893), I. 45. There is hardly a place in Italy … where some Englishman has not suicided himself.
1893. Athenæum, 24 June, 794/2. The principal character, after behaving like a cad, suicides ‘beautifully.’
1898. ‘R. Boldrewood,’ Rom. Canvass Town, 133. I don’t wonder that they suicide now and then.
2. trans. (euphemistically) To do to death.
1876. Spectator, 12 Aug., 997 (N. & Q.). As the Divan cannot pass over the next heir … and as it is difficult to suicide him [etc.].
1898. Daily News, 17 Oct., 4/5. The actual forger was, to use a convenient piece of French slang, ‘suicided’ in gaol.
1899. H. Wright, Depopulation, 129. By suiciding the rest of the population.
1900. Spectator, 2 June, 769. It might be safer than suiciding him.
