suicide

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
suicide /ˈsuːɪsʌɪd/

▶noun

• 1 the action of killing oneself intentionally.

  ■ a person who does this.

  ■ [as modifier] relating to or denoting a military or terrorist operation carried out by people who do not expect to survive it: a suicide bomber.

• 2 a course of action which is disastrously damaging to one's own interests.

▶verb intentionally kill oneself.

– derivatives
suicidal adjective,
suicidally adverb.

– origin C17: from mod. L. suicida ‘act of suicide’, suicidium ‘person who commits suicide’, from L. sui ‘of oneself’ + caedere ‘kill’.