"killer instinct" meaning in English

See killer instinct in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-killer instinct.ogg [Australia] Forms: killer instincts [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|~}} killer instinct (countable and uncountable, plural killer instincts)
  1. (idiomatic) The natural inclination to do whatever is necessary to succeed (including extreme violence) Tags: countable, idiomatic, uncountable Translations (inclination): tappajan vaisto (Finnish)
    Sense id: en-killer_instinct-en-noun-jyKQPl7f Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 63 37 Disambiguation of 'inclination': 99 1
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see killer, instinct. Tags: countable, uncountable
    Sense id: en-killer_instinct-en-noun-JsjVA48K

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for killer instinct meaning in English (1.8kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "killer instincts",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "~"
      },
      "expansion": "killer instinct (countable and uncountable, plural killer instincts)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "63 37",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2011 January 25, Les Roopanarine, “Wigan 1 - 2 Aston Villa”, in BBC",
          "text": "Not for the first time this season, that lack of killer instinct - combined with an approach more responsive than probing - proved costly for Martinez's men.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The natural inclination to do whatever is necessary to succeed (including extreme violence)"
      ],
      "id": "en-killer_instinct-en-noun-jyKQPl7f",
      "links": [
        [
          "inclination",
          "inclination"
        ],
        [
          "succeed",
          "succeed"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) The natural inclination to do whatever is necessary to succeed (including extreme violence)"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable",
        "idiomatic",
        "uncountable"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "_dis1": "99 1",
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "inclination",
          "word": "tappajan vaisto"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see killer, instinct."
      ],
      "id": "en-killer_instinct-en-noun-JsjVA48K",
      "links": [
        [
          "killer",
          "killer#English"
        ],
        [
          "instinct",
          "instinct#English"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable",
        "uncountable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-killer instinct.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/4f/En-au-killer_instinct.ogg/En-au-killer_instinct.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/En-au-killer_instinct.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "killer instinct"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns",
    "English terms with audio links",
    "English uncountable nouns"
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "killer instincts",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "~"
      },
      "expansion": "killer instinct (countable and uncountable, plural killer instincts)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English idioms",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2011 January 25, Les Roopanarine, “Wigan 1 - 2 Aston Villa”, in BBC",
          "text": "Not for the first time this season, that lack of killer instinct - combined with an approach more responsive than probing - proved costly for Martinez's men.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The natural inclination to do whatever is necessary to succeed (including extreme violence)"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "inclination",
          "inclination"
        ],
        [
          "succeed",
          "succeed"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) The natural inclination to do whatever is necessary to succeed (including extreme violence)"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable",
        "idiomatic",
        "uncountable"
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see killer, instinct."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "killer",
          "killer#English"
        ],
        [
          "instinct",
          "instinct#English"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "countable",
        "uncountable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-killer instinct.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/4f/En-au-killer_instinct.ogg/En-au-killer_instinct.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/En-au-killer_instinct.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "inclination",
      "word": "tappajan vaisto"
    }
  ],
  "word": "killer instinct"
}

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.