uxoricide

Uxoricide is the killing of one's own wife. It can also be used in the context of the killing of one's own girlfriend. It can refer to the act itself or the person who carries it out. Conversely, the killing of a husband or boyfriend is called mariticide. It comes from the Latin meaning and -cide, from meaning .

== Rates of uxoricide == Though overall rates of spousal violence and homicide in the US have declined since the 1970s, rates of uxoricide are significantly higher than rates of mariticide (the murder of a husband). Of the 2340 deaths at the hands of intimate partners in the US in 2007, female victims made up 70%. FBI data from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s found that for every 100 husbands who killed their wives in the United States, about 75 women killed their husbands. However, wives were more likely to kill their husbands than vice versa in some US cities including Chicago, Detroit, Houston, and St. Louis. Uxoricide rates varied among different demographic subgroups. In the US, 2002 murderers of spouses (husband and wives combined) were 69.4% white, 25.7% black and 4.8% Asian/Pacific Islander and 0.1 American Indian/ Alaska Native.