Showing results for "roadkill"

• a variation of road kill.

roadkill

British  

/ ˈrəʊdˌkɪl /

noun

1. the remains of an animal or animals killed on the road by motor vehicles

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Explanation

Roadkill means the dead body of an animal that's been hit by a car. Some people are so sensitive they can't stand to look at roadkill. Animals that die on a highway, usually because they've been struck by a vehicle, are roadkill. You can also spell it as two words, road kill. The word is fairly modern, from the early 1970's, in part because before cars were invented — and before there were so many of them on the roads — there weren't so many animals affected by the transportation of humans. Use the term figuratively when someone feels unwanted: "I felt like roadkill when you didn't invite me."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

roadkill

"If we continue like this, we're just going to be weak individual players waiting to be taken out. If we don't change something pretty fundamentally and pretty urgently, we're just going to be roadkill."

From BBC ● Sep. 27, 2026

As humans build more roads, more houses, more restaurants and more stores, we are providing the steady supply of roadkill and rotting trash they need.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 16, 2026

Once left for dead as AI roadkill, Google Search ad revenue rose by 19% from the year before in the first quarter, its best mark since 2022.

From Barron's ● Jun. 2, 2026

Just as roadkill summons vultures, so too does human misery summon journalists, who travel across the country to shove cameras and recorders at people enduring things no one should experience.

From Slate ● Feb. 11, 2026

The meat was stringy and gray with little streaks of pink in it, and it reeked like roadkill.

From "Two Degrees" by Alan Gratz

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