Kills

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /kɪlz/

Definitions

1. To end the life of a living being | To cause the death of someone or something intentionally | To eliminate or destroy the existence of a person or creature
2. To terminate the life of an organism through violence or intent | To bring about the death of a person or entity, often through deliberate action | To cause the cessation of life in a living being by means of force or intention
3. To cause the death of an individual or animal through deliberate actions | To extinguish life in a living character or creature, often intentionally | To bring about the end of existence of a living entity via force or intention

Etymology: The story of "kill" in English is a surprisingly tangled one, and it is far less straightforward than the word’s stark meaning might suggest. The earliest records of "kill" date to the Middle English period, around the 13th century, when it appeared as "killen" or "kellen." Unlike many other English verbs of violence, which have clear roots in Latin or Old Norse, this term’s origins are somewhat obscure, making its rise in English all the more intriguing. Most etymologists agree that "kill" does not descend from Old English or from the Old Norse verb "kila" (meaning "to strike"), though the similarity once led some to suggest a Scandinavian origin. Instead, the most widely accepted theory traces the word to Middle English "killen" or "cullen," likely borrowed from an Old English or Old Norse substratum in the northern dialects, possibly as a variant of "cull," meaning "to select out" (and by extension, to remove or dispatch). The connection between "to kill" and "to cull" highlights a shift in nuance — from choosing or separating to ending life, a leap in severity that reflects the word’s evolution through common usage rather than a direct linguistic inheritance. The sense of "kill" as we know it, meaning "to cause the death of," quickly took root and supplanted older native English verbs like "slay" and "quell" in everyday speech, especially in the north of England and Scotland. "Quell," for instance, originally meant "to kill," but over time softened to its modern sense of "to suppress" or "to pacify," leaving "kill" to occupy the more direct and violent semantic territory. Today, the term’s bluntness is a testament to its emergence from dialect and colloquial speech rather than from the formal vocabulary of court or clergy. It stands apart from Latinate or Norman-French synonyms, which tend to carry a more formal or legal flavor. The verb form "kills" is simply the third-person singular present tense, following the regular English verb pattern. The word’s history is a reminder that the English language, like the world it describes, has often favored the direct, the local, and the plainspoken.

Synonyms: murders, slaughters, eliminates

Antonyms: saves, rescues