"kill the messenger" meaning in English

See kill the messenger in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: kills the messenger [present, singular, third-person], killing the messenger [participle, present], killed the messenger [participle, past], killed the messenger [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} kill the messenger (third-person singular simple present kills the messenger, present participle killing the messenger, simple past and past participle killed the messenger)
  1. Alternative form of shoot the messenger Tags: alt-of, alternative Alternative form of: shoot the messenger
    Sense id: en-kill_the_messenger-en-verb-uajVeKk~ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for kill the messenger meaning in English (1.3kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "kills the messenger",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "killing the messenger",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "killed the messenger",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "killed the messenger",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "kill the messenger (third-person singular simple present kills the messenger, present participle killing the messenger, simple past and past participle killed the messenger)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "alt_of": [
        {
          "word": "shoot the messenger"
        }
      ],
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1893 December 12, Rev. B. Minard, “Sunday in the Churches”, in Lewiston Evening Journal, Maine",
          "text": "To disbelieve the message and seek to kill the messenger will not destroy the message.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Alternative form of shoot the messenger"
      ],
      "id": "en-kill_the_messenger-en-verb-uajVeKk~",
      "links": [
        [
          "shoot the messenger",
          "shoot the messenger#English"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "alt-of",
        "alternative"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "kill the messenger"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "kills the messenger",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "killing the messenger",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "killed the messenger",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "killed the messenger",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "kill the messenger (third-person singular simple present kills the messenger, present participle killing the messenger, simple past and past participle killed the messenger)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "alt_of": [
        {
          "word": "shoot the messenger"
        }
      ],
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1893 December 12, Rev. B. Minard, “Sunday in the Churches”, in Lewiston Evening Journal, Maine",
          "text": "To disbelieve the message and seek to kill the messenger will not destroy the message.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Alternative form of shoot the messenger"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "shoot the messenger",
          "shoot the messenger#English"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "alt-of",
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      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "kill the messenger"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 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.