I often hear this phrase.

Problem:
The phrase draws attention to the perpetrator instead of to the victims.

Explanation:
Sorry about two blog posts in a row related to suicides, but I feel very compelled to write about this second topic.

To me, the phrase “suicide bomber” is a euphemism.

For the sake of better communication, it is best to avoid euphemisms.

The noun “euphemism” means the substitution of a vague or mild expression for one that people consider to be blunt or offensive.

The blunt meaning of “suicide bomber” is “a person who committed suicide by killing himself/herself with a bomb with the intent to kill other people — usually as many other people as possible — in the explosion”.

The problem that I have with the phrase “suicide bomber” is that it plays on the natural sympathy of readers and listeners who see or hear the word “suicide” instead of the natural antipathy of readers and listeners who see or hear the word “bomber”.

People see or read “suicide bomber” and focus on the word “suicide” as much as or more than they focus on the word “bomber”.

Unconsciously, their brains tend to say to them

• “Oh, poor guy! He committed suicide! I wonder what was wrong with him or his condition.”

instead of

• “That bastard! He bombed that market and killed a bunch of people! I am glad that he is dead.”

I truly believe that terrorist organizations have promoted the phrase “suicide bomber” as a marketing technique.

The phrase “suicide bomber” draws attention to a terrorist organization’s people and its goals.

If you tack on “homicide” to this phrase to get “suicide/homicide bomber”, then you reveal that the person not only killed himself or herself but also intentionally killed others.

But I prefer to take this to the next step by using “homicide bomber” — so as to draw attention away from the terrorist and his/her organization or cause and toward the victims.

The result is that the reader or listener then focuses on the crime and its victims instead of on the “poor, suicidal criminal”.

Sure, “suicide bomber” tells you that the bomber killed himself or herself intentionally during the bombing, and “homicide bomber” does not tell you whether the bomber used a roadside bomb or died, too, but the word “homicide” definitely tells you that the bomber killed others.

Being curious, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “suicide bomber” — 2,160,000 matches
• “homicide bomber” — 32,400 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used “suicide bomber” versus “homicide bomber” by a ratio of 66.7-to-1, which depresses me but must dazzle the marketing geniuses in terrorist organizations.

Solution:
“homicide bomber”