killed

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of kill.

   The disease killed thousands before a vaccine was finally found.

   Many soldiers were killed in the final hours of the battle.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs here. It is the simple past (the frost killed the vines) and also the participle that follows have and be (has killed, were killed). It carries every sense of kill, not only the deadly one. A bill can be killed in committee and an engine killed at the switch. In casual speech, a comic who killed the audience stunned and overwhelmed it.

2. 2
   adjective

   Inactivated so that it can no longer reproduce or cause infection, as a microorganism used in certain vaccines.

   A killed preparation cannot establish infection even in vulnerable patients.

   Clinicians favored the killed formulation for the immunization campaign.

   Oppositelive

   Note

   Vaccine makers use this plain word for inactivated. A killed vaccine contains organisms made non-viable by heat, chemicals or radiation. They still keep enough of their structure to provoke an immune response. Its working opposite is live attenuated, where the organism is weakened but still alive. In clinical writing, killed and inactivated stand in for each other freely.

3. 3
   adjective

   Having had its dissolved oxygen removed, as steel deoxidized before it is cast.

   Killed steel produces sound castings because no gas bubbles form as it solidifies.

   Engineers specified a killed grade to avoid blowholes in the forging.

   Note

   A steelmaker's term, heard almost only in killed steel or a killed grade. Deoxidizing agents such as aluminum or silicon are added before casting, so the metal lies quiet as it solidifies instead of giving off gas. The contrast is with rimming steel, whose gas activity is exactly what this treatment stops. It takes no comparison: steel is killed or it is not.

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