felo-de-se

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felo-de-se

1. the act of suicide.
2. a person who commits suicide.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun	1.	felo-de-se - a person who kills himself intentionally suicide killer, slayer - someone who causes the death of a person or animal
	2.	felo-de-se - an act of deliberate self destruction self-annihilation, self-destruction - the act of killing yourself; "it is a crime to commit suicide"

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References in periodicals archive ?

The eternally circular ouroboros is generally accepted to symbolize life's completion and renewal, but bear in mind that the ouroboros is actually a snake that's eating itself in a nihilistic, autophagous felo-de-se, and it seems that Manganelli might have envisioned Centuria not as circular (which it's not--its recurrent elements are more symphonic, like Curtis White's Requiem or even Calvino's Invisible Cities), but as ouroborically destructive.

Giorgio Manganelli. Centuria: One Hundred Ouroboric Novels

Beginning with the controversy surrounding the burial of Viscount Castlereagh in 1822, when laws against the crime of self-murder (felo-de-se) were still in place, and ending in 1898 with the suicide of Eleanor Marx, Gates charts the shift in attitudes toward self-destruction which took place in the intervening years.

Viewed within the context she has created, such works as the Pre-Raphaelite painting Ophelia, by John Everett Millais, Dickens's Bleak House, David Copperfield and Oliver Twist (all of which feature suicidal heroines) and Thomas Hood's stirring poem "Bridge of Sighs," with its tribute to the fallen woman who finds sanctuary only in the Thames, become evidence of a pronounced tendency, among male artists at least, to portray the female felo-de-se as morally flawed or insane.

Barbara T. Gates. Victorian Suicide: Mad Crimes and Sad Histories

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