Question

Out of the given alternatives, choose the one which can be substituted for the given word/sentence.
The act of killing one’s wife
A) Genocide
B) Uxoricide
C) Canicide
D) Avicide

Answer 1

Hint: This word has a medieval Latin origin. The first half of the word has a Latin origin while the second half has an English origin. The suffix –cide is used in all the options given in the question. It is used to denote an act of killing or a person or substance that performs the act of killing.

Complete answer:
To solve this question let us see what the prefixes of each of the options mean. ‘Geno’ is the Latin for ‘race’.
Option A) Genocide – Genocide is the act of deliberately killing a goodly number of people belonging to a particular group or community in order to destroy their group. For e.g. The people escaped through tunnels to avoid the genocide. This is not related to ‘killing one’s wife’. This option is incorrect.
Option B) Uxoricide – It is the killing or the murder of a wife by her husband. It may also refer to the man who murders his wife. For e.g. Everyone was afraid of him after he was charged for uxoricide. This is the correct substitute for the phrase in the question. Therefore, this option is correct.
Option C) Canicide – It refers to the act of killing a dog, or the person who kills a dog. For e.g. Don’t give that medicine to your dog, as it has a history of acting like a canicide. This word is not the correct substitution for ‘one’s wife’s murder. Therefore, this option is incorrect.
Option D) Avicide – It is the act of killing birds or the substances that are used to kill birds. For e.g. She spread some avicide to kill the birds in her garden. This word is not related to the phrase given in the question. Hence, this option is wrong.

Thus, the correct answer is Option (B) i.e, Uxoricide.

Note: The process of substituting one word for a phrase is known as one-word substitution. It's a technique in which people employ a single word to replace a long-phrase in order to make the sentence structure more readable. It is critical in the English language to write correctly and communicate in single words.

A few examples are:
i) Philanthropist: One who loves mankind
ii) Pessimist: The one who looks at the negative or dark side of everything.
ii) Gourmet: One who has a keen interest in food and drinks.