I keep running into people who say their pet or other animal got "murdered". But an animal can't be murdered. I tend to keep my mouth shut on the matter to not look like a know-it-all, but WTF?
Still not murder. You can murder a human, a human can murder you, but you can't murder an animal. It's impossible, given the nature of the word and our use of it in the English language.
Language changes to meet the demands of society. Maybe this is one of those instances. People consider their pets to be part of their family, giving them para-human status, so to them it's murder. I've never heard anyone use that particular term, however.
Well, it doesn't make sense it context, especially if people use the term for animals. Like an acquaintance of mine said her dog was "murdered" by another dog. That isn't true. With humans, we have a certain morality with fellow humans that is different with animals and animals don't have this. Animals kill each other for food or defense, they don't have a morality about it. They don't weight the options of killing vs. not killing. This is why animals kill each other, not murder each other. People have a sense of morality and knowing what is wrong, that is why when we kill each other, we call it murder. Of course, if people in the service kill people, they don't call it murder, right? So even in some instances, people who kill other people don't "murder" them
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