"kill off" meaning in English

See kill off in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

IPA: /kɪl ɒf/ [UK], /kɪl ɔf/ [US], /kɪl ɑf/ [US] Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-kill off.wav [US] Forms: kills off [present, singular, third-person], killing off [participle, present], killed off [participle, past], killed off [past]
Etymology: kill + off Etymology templates: {{compound|en|kill|off}} kill + off Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} kill off (third-person singular simple present kills off, present participle killing off, simple past and past participle killed off)
  1. To eliminate, or make extinct. Categories (topical): Death Derived forms: kill-off [noun], killoff [noun] Related terms: die off [verb] Translations (to eliminate or make extinct): 𐌰𐍆𐌳𐌰𐌿𐌸𐌾𐌰𐌽 (afdauþjan) (Gothic)
    Sense id: en-kill_off-en-verb-1qit2sLQ Disambiguation of Death: 96 4 0 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English links with manual fragments, English phrasal verbs with particle (off), English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 58 25 17 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 69 21 10 Disambiguation of English links with manual fragments: 69 20 12 Disambiguation of English phrasal verbs with particle (off): 66 21 14 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 69 22 9 Disambiguation of 'to eliminate or make extinct': 97 1 1
  2. (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.
    Sense id: en-kill_off-en-verb-OIQQVUt5
  3. (figurative) To put an end to. Tags: figuratively
    Sense id: en-kill_off-en-verb-rYH5Y7Pi

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for kill off meaning in English (4.8kB)

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      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "kill",
        "3": "off"
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      "expansion": "kill + off",
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  "etymology_text": "kill + off",
  "forms": [
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      "form": "kills off",
      "tags": [
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      "form": "killing off",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "58 25 17",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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      "derived": [
        {
          "_dis1": "74 26 0",
          "tags": [
            "noun"
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          "word": "kill-off"
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        {
          "_dis1": "74 26 0",
          "tags": [
            "noun"
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          "word": "killoff"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "We killed off the Dodo by over-hunting."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To eliminate, or make extinct."
      ],
      "id": "en-kill_off-en-verb-1qit2sLQ",
      "links": [
        [
          "eliminate",
          "eliminate"
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        [
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          "extinct"
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      "related": [
        {
          "_dis1": "74 26 0",
          "tags": [
            "verb"
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      "translations": [
        {
          "_dis1": "97 1 1",
          "code": "got",
          "lang": "Gothic",
          "roman": "afdauþjan",
          "sense": "to eliminate or make extinct",
          "word": "𐌰𐍆𐌳𐌰𐌿𐌸𐌾𐌰𐌽"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "The writers are killing off lots of people in the soap opera."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To take a character out of a television series or other work by purposefully and deliberately having them killed within the plot."
      ],
      "id": "en-kill_off-en-verb-OIQQVUt5",
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        [
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        ],
        [
          "television series",
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      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(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."
      ],
      "raw_tags": [
        "of writers or producers"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1999 January 16, Bill Amend, FoxTrot",
          "text": "(Jason) The only thing I had handy to send them was this one dinky little program I'd written for fun.\n(Mom) And it killed off interest?\n(Jason) Actually, it killed off the Internet.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011 September 28, Tom Rostance, “Arsenal 2 - 1 Olympiakos”, in BBC Sport",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2019 November 20, Christian Wolmar, “DfT places fresh hurdles in the path of Heathrow link”, in Rail, page 52",
          "text": "There are many ways to kill off projects, and the Department for Transport is proving particularly adept at finding new ones.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 July 26, Mike Isaac, “‘Operating With Increased Intensity’: Zuckerberg Leads Meta Into Next Phase”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "The moment is reminiscent of other bet-the-company gambles, such as when Netflix killed off its DVD-mailing business last decade to focus on streaming.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        "To put an end to."
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        "(figurative) To put an end to."
      ],
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      "ipa": "/kɪl ɑf/",
      "tags": [
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      "tags": [
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  "word": "kill off"
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{
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    "English phrasal verbs",
    "English phrasal verbs with particle (off)",
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    "English terms with audio links",
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    "English verbs",
    "en:Death"
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      "word": "kill-off"
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  "etymology_text": "kill + off",
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      "form": "killed off",
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  "senses": [
    {
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "We killed off the Dodo by over-hunting."
        }
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      "glosses": [
        "To eliminate, or make extinct."
      ],
      "links": [
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          "eliminate"
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        {
          "text": "The writers are killing off lots of people in the soap opera."
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        "To take a character out of a television series or other work by purposefully and deliberately having them killed within the plot."
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        "(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."
      ],
      "raw_tags": [
        "of writers or producers"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1999 January 16, Bill Amend, FoxTrot",
          "text": "(Jason) The only thing I had handy to send them was this one dinky little program I'd written for fun.\n(Mom) And it killed off interest?\n(Jason) Actually, it killed off the Internet.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011 September 28, Tom Rostance, “Arsenal 2 - 1 Olympiakos”, in BBC Sport",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2019 November 20, Christian Wolmar, “DfT places fresh hurdles in the path of Heathrow link”, in Rail, page 52",
          "text": "There are many ways to kill off projects, and the Department for Transport is proving particularly adept at finding new ones.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 July 26, Mike Isaac, “‘Operating With Increased Intensity’: Zuckerberg Leads Meta Into Next Phase”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "The moment is reminiscent of other bet-the-company gambles, such as when Netflix killed off its DVD-mailing business last decade to focus on streaming.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To put an end to."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(figurative) To put an end to."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "figuratively"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/kɪl ɒf/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/kɪl ɔf/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
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    {
      "ipa": "/kɪl ɑf/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
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      "tags": [
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  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "got",
      "lang": "Gothic",
      "roman": "afdauþjan",
      "sense": "to eliminate or make extinct",
      "word": "𐌰𐍆𐌳𐌰𐌿𐌸𐌾𐌰𐌽"
    }
  ],
  "word": "kill off"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.