- present participle of kill.
killing
Americannoun
-
killings
plural
-
the act of a person or thing that kills.
-
the total game killed on a hunt.
-
Informal. a quick and unusually large profit or financial gain.
We would all like to win the lottery or make a killing in the stock market.
adjective
-
Tuberculosis was a killing disease well into the 20th century, and society found itself with few remedies.
-
exhausting.
An ever-expanding workload is imperceptible at first, but eventually we're operating at a killing pace.
-
Informal. irresistibly funny.
-
Slang. very attractive or fascinating.
The actress is known for her outstanding beauty and killing smile.
adjective
-
informal very tiring; exhausting
a killing pace
-
informal extremely funny; hilarious
-
causing death; fatal
noun
-
the act of causing death; slaying
-
informal a sudden stroke of success, usually financial, as in speculations on the stock market (esp in the phrase make a killing )
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of killing
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English killing(e), kyllyng(e) (gerund); see kill 1, -ing 1, -ing 2
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
A civilian-contracted plane flying from Anchorage crashed near a remote radar site in western Alaska on Thursday, killing all eight people on board, aviation and military authorities said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
"People were not calling me Cris Cyborg any more, they were calling me 'the killing machine'," she said.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026
Mr. Statham, a not infrequently delightful actor whose main weakness is an inability to say no to mediocre projects, undertakes the usual heroic killing spree in “Mutiny,” a brief, reasonably compelling but shamelessly workmanlike feature.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026
That outbreak hit west Africa in 2013-2016, killing more than 11,300 people, mainly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
From Barron's ● Aug. 18, 2026
Then, Congress passed a law to stop humans from killing marine mammals.
From "The Line Tender" by Kate Allen
The defence, which rested its case on Friday, does not dispute that Clancy carried out the killings but say she has pleaded not guilty to murder charges because she was experiencing postpartum psychosis.
From BBC ● Aug. 22, 2026
The motive of the killings remains a mystery.
From Barron's ● Aug. 20, 2026
The April killings sparked an outcry from rights groups and some leading Ethiopian figures, including the influential head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
From BBC ● Jul. 31, 2026
Ms. Borgman doesn’t—and likely wouldn’t—make use of the recently released, gruesomely detailed autopsy reports on the killings, documentation that was probably unavailable during production anyway.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026
Yet White and his team were able to show how Hale benefited from at least two of these other killings.
From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
