- suicide (n.)
- "deliberate killing of oneself," 1650s, from Modern Latin suicidium "suicide," from Latin sui "of oneself" (genitive of se "self"), from PIE *s(u)w-o- "one's own," from root *s(w)e- (see idiom) + -cidium "a killing" (see -cide). Probably an English coinage; much maligned by Latin purists because it "may as well seem to participate of sus, a sow, as of the pronoun sui" [Phillips]. The meaning "person who kills himself deliberately" is from 1728. In Anglo-Latin, the term for "one who commits suicide" was felo-de-se, literally "one guilty concerning himself."
November, the suicide season. [Samuel Foote, "The Bankrupt," 1773]
In England, suicides were legally criminal if sane, but not if judged to have been mentally deranged. The criminal ones were given degrading burial in roadways until 1823. Suicide blonde first attested 1942. Baseball suicide squeeze is attested from 1955.