Kill

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /kɪl/

Definitions

1. To cause a living being to die ; to remove or make something stop existing ; to cause something to cease working or to overcome a challenge
2. To end the life of a person, animal, or organism ; to completely get rid of or wipe out something ; to disable or defeat something effectively
3. To bring about the death of an organism ; to destroy or terminate the presence of something ; to stop an operation or win against an opponent

Etymology: The verb "kill" is one of English's great mysteries: its ancestry is uncertain, and several plausible candidates pull in different directions. Middle English "killen" and "kyllen" meant "to strike, beat, or cut," and that original violence is the clearest thread. Scots "kele" and "keil" carry the same sense of harming, and related forms in Middle Dutch, Middle Low German, and Middle High German meant to torment, ache, or hurt. Some scholars trace these back to a Proto-Germanic root meaning "to throw or hit," while others connect it to an Old Norse verb meaning "to hit on the head," which fits the older blunt-force sense. A competing theory links it to Old English "cwellan," meaning "to kill, murder, or execute," the source of "quell." If that holds, the modern verb may have absorbed a older killing sense from a different family of words. The honest answer is that no single derivation is settled. Meanwhile, a separate, unrelated word spelled "kill" entered English from Dutch, meaning a stream or creek. That is why many American place names ending in "-kill," such as Murderkill in Delaware, have nothing to do with murder. They likely come from Dutch "Modderkil," meaning "mud creek."

Synonyms: murder, slay, execute, terminate, dispatch

Antonyms: save, rescue, preserve, protect, revive