To kill is to cause the death of a person, animal, or living thing. It can also mean to stop something completely, like “kill the engine” or “kill the noise.”
From Old English “cyllan” or “cwellan” meaning “to kill, to put to death”, related to “cwellan” (to quell or destroy). The word has always carried a strong, direct sense of ending life or action.
English uses “kill” for both living beings and machines, which can blur emotional lines: we “kill time” and “kill the lights” as casually as we say “kill a bug.” That wide use may make the word sound lighter than the act it originally described. It shows how language can soften serious ideas through repetition.
Violence, including killing, has been heavily gendered in both perpetration and victimization, with men more often portrayed as agents of violence and women as passive victims. Language like 'crime of passion' has sometimes minimized men’s lethal violence against women.
Use 'kill' precisely and avoid metaphors that normalize or trivialize gendered violence (e.g., 'he’d kill his wife if she did that' as a joke).
["cause death","eliminate","terminate (in technical contexts)"]
Women’s movements have pushed to recognize patterns like femicide and intimate partner homicide as systemic, not isolated 'passion' crimes.
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