What it means
قاتل (ghâtel) means murderer or killer. It is borrowed from Arabic, where قاتل (qâtil) is the active participle of the verb قَتَلَ (qatala), meaning to kill. In Persian the word is used across registers: in legal and journalistic language it is the standard term for the perpetrator of a homicide, and in everyday speech it appears in phrases describing criminals or, occasionally, used hyperbolically to describe something overwhelming (as in «این گرما قاتله», this heat is killing me). The compound قاتل سریالی (ghâtel-e seriali) is the direct borrowing of the English term serial killer and is the standard phrase used in Persian crime reporting. The related noun قتل (ghatl) means murder or killing, and the phrase به قتل رساندن (be ghatl resândan) means to commit murder, literally to bring someone to killing. Note that in Persian the ق is pronounced gh, not q as in Arabic.
How to use it
- قاتل رو دستگیر کردن (ghâtel ro dastgir kardan) “They arrested the murderer.”
- اون قاتل سریالیه (un ghâtel-e serialiye) “He is a serial killer.”
- قاتل کیه؟ (ghâtel kiye?) “Who is the killer?”
- این گرما قاتله (in germâ ghâtele) “This heat is killing me.” (hyperbolic)
Cultural note
In the Iranian legal system, cases of قتل (murder) follow rules derived from Islamic jurisprudence, including the concept of قصاص (qesâs), which grants the victim’s family the right to demand retribution, accept blood money (دیه, diye), or pardon the killer. This means the family of a murder victim has direct standing in the sentencing outcome. The dramatic public pardons that sometimes occur at the execution site, where a victim’s family removes the noose at the last moment, are widely reported in Iranian media and reflect this legally embedded role of forgiveness.
References
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