Pl. felones-, felos-de-se. [Anglo-Lat. felō FELON, dē sē of himself.]
1. One who ‘deliberately puts an end to his own existence, or commits any unlawful malicious act, the consequence of which is his own death’ (Blackstone).
[c. 1250. Bracton, III. II. xxxi. Eodem mode quo quis feloniam facere possit interficiendo alium, ita feloniam facere possit interficiendo seipsum, quæ quidem felonia dicitur fieri de seipso.]
1651. W. G., trans. Cowel’s The Institutes of the Lawes of England, 124. He that murders himself, is by us tearmed Felo de se, and hath no other Successor, as to his Chattells, but the Exchequer.
1689. Hickeringill, Modest Inq., iv. 30. How desperately they stabb themselves, and are Felones de se.
1814. Byron, in Moore, Life (1875), 421.
| That ‘Felo de se’ who, half drunk with his malmsey, | |
| Walk’d out of his depth and was lost in a calm sea. |
1874. G. W. Dasent, Half a Life, I. 85. Dick, who, at once coroner and jury, pronounced him to have died by his own deed, and to be, in fact felo de se.
b. fig.
1678. Lively Orac., iii. 40. Making their Natures a kind of felo de se to prompt the destroying itself.
1704. E. Ward, Dissenting Hypocrite, 34. That Church is Moderate and Easy T’ excess, which would be Felo de se.
1749. Fielding, Tom Jones, VIII. xiv. That Protestants, that are members of the Church of England, should be such apostates, such Felos de se, I cannot believe it.
1767. Blackstone, Comm., II. 31. This modus is felo de se and destroys itself.
1840. De Quincey, Style, Wks. 1862, X. 164. A man who should content himself with a single condensed enunciation of a perplexed doctrine, would be a madman and a felo-de-se, as respected his reliance upon that doctrine.
attrib. 1826. Edin. Rev., XLV., Dec., 171. This felo de se system.
c. In etymological nonce-use (see quot.)
1670. Clarendon, Ess., Tracts (1727), 198. He is literally felo de se, who deprives and robs himself of that which no body but himself can rob him of.
2. A case to which the verdict ‘felo de se’ is appropriate; self-murder, suicide.
1771. E. Long, Trial of Dog ‘Porter,’ in Hone, Every-day Bk., II. 205. Your worships should incline to deem it a felo de se.
1840. Hood, Up the Rhine, 202. ‘A great many suicides,’ continued Markham, ‘were attributable to Werther, who brought felo-de-se quite into vogue.’
1883. S. C. Hall, Retrospect, I. 45. The ‘crowner’s quest’ had pronounced the wretched creature guilty of felo-de-se, and he was buried by torchlight where four roads met, and a stake was driven through his body.
