Etymology
The English term and concept of "serial killer" is commonly attributed to former FBI Special agent Robert Ressler in the 1970s. Author Ann Rule postulates in her 2004 book Kiss Me, Kill Me that the English-language credit for coining the term "serial killer" goes to LAPD detective Pierce Brooks, creator of the ViCAP system. Criminal justice historian Peter Vronsky, in his book Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters, while arguing that former FBI profiler Robert Ressler might have coined the official police use of the term "serial homicide" when guest lecturing in 1974 at Bramshill Police Academy in Britain, states that the terms "serial murder" and "serial murderer" appear in 1966 in John Brophy's book The Meaning of Murder. Vronsky reports that in Anne Rule's seminal book on Ted Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me, published in 1980, the term "serial killer" does not appear and is not yet in popular use.
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Famous quotes containing the word etymology:
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)
“The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)