Meaning & use
suicide bomber
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountable
A person who sets off explosives on their own body or in a vehicle in an attack, knowing that they will die in the blast.
Grammar: Countable: a suicide bomber, several suicide bombers.
Patterns
- a suicide bomber in something
Police said a suicide bomber had struck the market, and the street was sealed off.
The report studied why a suicide bomber might be recruited by an extremist group.
Security staff are trained to spot the signs of a suicide bomber in crowded stations.
Word forms
| plural | suicide bombers |
|---|
Common combinations
- a suicide bomber detonated
- A suicide bomber detonated a device near the checkpoint.
- suicide bomber attack
- The suicide bomber attack shocked the whole country.
- recruit a suicide bomber
- Investigators found how the group recruited a suicide bomber.
- stop a suicide bomber
- Guards managed to stop a suicide bomber at the gate.
Synonyms and how they differ
- suicide attacker
- Suicide attacker is broader because it includes attacks with guns or knives, while suicide bomber refers to explosives.
- human bomb
- Human bomb is a vivid media phrase that is less neutral than suicide bomber.
- bomber
- Bomber alone can mean any person or aircraft that drops bombs, so it lacks the self-sacrifice meaning.
Word family
Commonly confused: suicide bomber or bomb disposal expert?
suicide bomber vs bomb disposal expert
A bomb disposal expert works to defuse explosives and is never the attacker.
Practice
Which phrase names a person who dies carrying out their own explosive attack?
Choose one answer.
A suicide bomber carries out the attack and dies in it. The others work with explosives or weapons safely.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “suicide bomber”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.