kill off
English
editEtymology
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editVerb
editkill off (third-person singular simple present kills off, present participle killing off, simple past and past participle killed off)
- To eliminate, or make extinct.
- We killed off the Dodo by over-hunting.
- (of writers or producers) To take a character out of a television series or other work by purposefully and deliberately having them killed within the plot.
- The writers are killing off lots of people in the soap opera.
- (figurative) To put an end to.
- 1999 January 16, Bill Amend, FoxTrot[1]:
- (Jason) The only thing I had handy to send them was this one dinky little program I'd written for fun.
(Mom) And it killed off interest?
(Jason) Actually, it killed off the Internet.
- 2011 September 28, Tom Rostance, “Arsenal 2 - 1 Olympiakos”, in BBC Sport[2]:
- Marouane Chamakh then spurned a great chance to kill the game off when he ran onto Andrey Arshavin's lofted through ball but shanked his shot horribly across the face of goal.
- 2019 November 20, Christian Wolmar, “DfT places fresh hurdles in the path of Heathrow link”, in Rail, page 52:
- There are many ways to kill off projects, and the Department for Transport is proving particularly adept at finding new ones.
Derived terms
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edit- die off (verb)