meaning - Difference between "commit suicide" and "suicide"


One of the examples in my English composition book (for learning to write my language's sentences in English) was "Why he committed suicide under such a good circumstance is an unsolved question.", but what I would have written would have been "Why he suicided...".


What's the difference between "commit suicide" and "suicide"? (I think I saw 'commit suicide' more than just 'suicide', and the spell checker of Google Chrome says that 'suicided' is not a word, even though I think it isn't wrong.)



Answer



There is no difference semantically. The only difference is that "suicide" as a verb is so rare I have never seen it before; whereas "commit suicide" is common. I would advise against unusual usages in general: You might confuse people, which is ill-advised, and in this case it is totally non-constructive to the language.


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