Parricide \Par"ri*cide\, n. [F., fr. L. parricida; pater father + caedere to kill. See {Father}, {Homicide}, and cf. {Patricide}.] 1. Properly, one who murders one's own father; in a wider sense, one who murders one's father or mother or any ancestor.
2. [L. parricidium.] The act or crime of murdering one's own father or any ancestor.
Few subsequent biographers of Marion Barry, you can be sure, will display the same modesty. There will be talk in the new-age mode of the inner child and symbolic parricide and lack of self-esteem, most of it fatuous and all of it beside the point.