killing
Noun pluralkillings
Pluralkillings
- 1Present participle and gerund of kill.
The drought was killing crops across the entire region.
Killing the infection early prevents serious complications.
Note
The verb form shares its spelling with the noun and the adjective, so the construction tells you which one you have. As a gerund it takes a direct object (killing the infection), while the noun takes of (the killing of livestock). With be it forms progressives, which carry the verb's figurative senses of pain and amazement: my feet are killing me, you're killing me.
- 2An instance in which someone is killed.
The killing took place in broad daylight near the market.
Witnesses described the killing to detectives the next morning.
Similarmurder, slaying, homicide
Note
The newsroom use: one particular death, with a time and a place. It pluralizes freely, as in brutal killings or mass killings, and it takes of before the victim: the killing of George Floyd. That sets it apart from the act in general, which can stand without an article, as when Burroughs writes that Tarzan found no pleasure in killing.
- 3
- 4
- 5A large amount of money, especially a sizable profit.
Early investors made a killing when the startup went public.
He made a killing flipping houses before the market cooled.
Similarfortune, bundle, packet, mint
Note
Money talk with a hunter's swagger, nearly always in the phrase make a killing. Melville Davisson Post, writing in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916, sets it at the racetrack, where a victim stakes everything on a sure thing, and he puts "killing" in inverted commas as fresh slang. The verb is almost always make, and the phrase suits a quick, large win rather than a steady wage.
- 6Extremely funny; so amusing as to leave one helpless with laughter.
His deadpan delivery was killing, and the whole room collapsed in laughter.
The comedian opened with a killing routine about airport security.
Similarhilarious, hysterical, side-splitting, uproarious
Note
The hyperbole of dying with laughter, turned into an adjective. It often follows the verb, as when someone finds a person or a performance killing. Lawrence Durrell's Livia (1978) sets it off in inverted commas, a word worn with a slight smile. Applied to a person, it can blur into the "devastatingly attractive" meaning; context tells you whether the speaker is laughing or admiring.
Less common meaning
- 7Strikingly or irresistibly attractive.
She flashed him a killing smile across the counter, and he forgot what he had come in to buy.
Half the parish agreed that the new curate was perfectly killing, and the pews filled up every Sunday.
Similarirresistible, devastating, fetching, ravishing, captivating
Note
An old compliment that borrows the language of slaughter, as if a beauty could slay at a glance. Edward Ward writes of "a killing Look" in 1756, and Thackeray's Vanity Fair has a gentleman opening a door "with the most killing grace." It usually sits before a word for a look, smile or manner, and it compares with more and most. Today it sounds arch or deliberately old-fashioned.
Showing meanings only.
killing is a form of kill
kill, verb: To cause the death of a person, animal, or other living thing. Full entry
- Spelling
- kill → killing: add -ing
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English kyllyng, equivalent to kill combined with the suffix -ing.