slay
Americanverb (used with object)
-
slays,
present (3rd person singular)
-
slayed,
past participle, past
-
slew,
past
-
slain,
past participle
-
slaying
present participle
-
to kill by violence.
In this game, your goal is to slay the evil dragon and take his hoard.
- Synonyms:
- assassinate, butcher, massacre, slaughter, murder
-
to destroy; extinguish.
Together we are slaying our self-doubt and working towards our dreams.
- Synonyms:
- ruin, annihilate
-
Slang.
-
to impress strongly and favorably; overwhelm, especially by humor.
Your jokes slay me.
-
to make a strong favorable impression with.
She really slayed her performance last night.
-
-
sley.
-
Obsolete. to strike.
verb (used without object)
-
slays,
present (3rd person singular)
-
slayed,
past participle, past
-
slew,
past
-
slain,
past participle
-
slaying
present participle
-
to kill or murder.
-
Slang. to have a strong favorable effect; to be remarkably impressive.
His whole album slays.
noun
idioms
verb
-
archaic to kill, esp violently
-
slang to impress (someone) sexually
-
obsolete to strike
Usage
What else does slay mean? Slay can mean "to kill a person or animal," "to make someone laugh," "to have sex with someone," or "to do something spectacularly well," especially when it comes to fashion, artistic performance, or self-confidence.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
slaysimple
-
slayssimple
-
have slainperfect
-
have slayedperfect
-
has slainperfect
-
has slayedperfect
-
am slayingprogressive
-
are slayingprogressive
-
is slayingprogressive
-
have been slayingperfect progressive
-
has been slayingperfect progressive
Past
-
slayedsimple
-
slewsimple
-
had slainperfect
-
had slayedperfect
-
was slayingprogressive
-
were slayingprogressive
-
had been slayingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of slay
First recorded before 900; Middle English sleen, slayn, Old English slēan; cognate with Dutch slaan, German schlagen, Old Norse slā, Gothic slahan “to strike, beat”
Explanation
Slay means to kill in a violent way. It has a mythic quality. You might slay the red knight. You might slay the dragon. You might slay the demon. But you probably wouldn't slay an annoying mosquito. Slay is an old word associated with knights and dragons. Like many old words it has some funky forms. When you killed someone or something in the past you say slew, as in "St. George slew the dragon." When you've already done it, you say you have slain.
Vocabulary lists containing slay
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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"Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, Act IV
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"A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury
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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:
While the lawyer protagonists are portrayed as the Davids trying to slay the giants, they aren’t entirely altruistic.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 3, 2026
See: Warsh says he’s determined to slay inflation.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 2, 2026
“My friend Chrissie is a champion of champions and as such she will slay this monster again,” Navratilova wrote.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 26, 2026
"My friend Chrissie is a champion of champions and as such she will slay this monster again," said long-time rival and friend Martina Navratilova.
From BBC ● Jun. 25, 2026
And instead of a fierce dragon to slay, a huge, curious goldfish mouths the end of the wizard’s hat.
From "Rules" by Cynthia Lord
The cast alone should make “Nocturne” a killer thriller, but we’ll have to wait until October to see if it slays.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 1, 2026
If Evil-Lyn can stop Adam with a freeze-ray, why does she wait until he slays many of her colleagues to do so?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 4, 2026
Powell slays a dragon, he listens to Van Halen, he quotes William Wallace, and carves a self-portrait out of a tree.
From Slate ● Feb. 10, 2025
It's about David, the shepherd boy who battles the giant Goliath, and against the odds, slays him.
From BBC ● Apr. 12, 2024
“But me, I think instead of writing about baseball or football, I’m gonna write about a knight who slays a fire-breathing dragon.”
From "Stella by Starlight" by Sharon M. Draper
On a night the Dodgers had a stadium-wide giveaway promotion for the anime show “Demon Slayer,” the club slayed a few recently troublesome demons of its own.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 16, 2025
Moderates are taking the proposal in stride, declaring victory after having slayed the sort of overhauls that Roy and others were pushing for.
From Slate ● May 13, 2025
"We literally ran from the Radisson Red, there were no soundchecks and Daniel went on and just absolutely slayed the audience. He was just sensational," he said.
From BBC ● May 6, 2024
Bowen Yang slayed with a Broadway-style farewell to Santos on a recent “Saturday Night Live.”
From Salon ● Dec. 17, 2023
Girls wear their hair colored, curled, laid, and slayed.
From "The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas
Paramount+, with its catalog of CBS series and the canon of “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan, offers a slew of All-American programming.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026
Because cortisol is something that can be fairly easily and quantifiably measured, and research shows that high cortisol can be a feature of a slew of problems, it’s an appealing candidate.
From Slate ● Oct. 9, 2026
Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have pursued a slew of criminal cases against protesters involved in those demonstrations, though many of the cases have been dismissed, reduced to misdemeanor charges or rejected by grand juries.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2026
It centred around a slew of TikTok videos narrated by a distinctively "deep" and "lustrous" voice that Tsuda, 55, said can only be his.
From Barron's ● Sep. 30, 2026
Efraín helped his grandfather carry his sister into the house with Inés and a slew of gabbing quinceañera attendants following close behind them.
From "Summer of the Mariposas" by Guadalupe García McCall
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who hasn’t appeared publicly since succeeding his slain father, referred to “the defenders of the Strait of Hormuz” in a statement issued in his name Monday.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2026
Andrew Montlake, chief executive of mortgage broker Coreco, said that the latest data showed that "the inflation dragon has not been fully slain".
From BBC ● Sep. 16, 2026
Under a blazing sun, clad in black and clutching portraits of their slain leader Ali Khamenei, Iranian pilgrims streamed across the border into Iraq to observe the Arbaeen, the most revered event in Shia Islam.
From Barron's ● Aug. 1, 2026
“Princess Mononoke” begins with a worm-covered demon attacking a pastoral village, only to be slain by its prince, Ashitaka.
From Salon ● Jul. 22, 2026
The Internet, powerful as it is, has hardly slain the beast that is information asymmetry.
From "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" by Steven D. Levitt
Davis’s defense attorney Michael Sanft argued the book was a self-aggrandizing fiction designed to profit from Tupac’s slaying and insisted there was little evidence to corroborate his client’s written claims.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2026
Salazar’s mother previously told The Times her son had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and hospitalized for his mental health struggles in the years before the slaying.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2026
Her slaying shocked the world and put Malta, the European Union's smallest member state, in the spotlight over its apparent rule-of-law failings.
From Barron's ● Sep. 2, 2026
“In many ways, he always thought that he was Saint George slaying the dragon,” the author writes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 22, 2026
This problem—by which he meant not the interrupted kiss, but this whole ungodly impasse of city and citadel—would not be solved by slaying.
From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
