kill
verb (used with object)
to deprive of life in any manner; cause the death of; slay.
was killing
-
past progressiveof kill.past progressive
Used to describe an ongoing action or continuous state that was happening at a specific time in the past.
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.
She told her son the stress was killing her.
From BBC ● Sep. 19, 2026
At that time, it was killing people in small, mobile hunter-gatherer groups - long before farming and urban life created the crowded conditions usually associated with major plague outbreaks.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 15, 2026
Will, rather than being deprived, simply had very particular rules about what he would eat, and whether or not his diet was killing him didn’t necessarily mean he was mentally incompetent.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 17, 2026
“The timeline should be as soon as possible, because heat was killing workers yesterday,” said Renee Guerrero Deleon, an organizer at the Southern California Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 29, 2024
At the request of the U.S. government, Gey took Henrietta’s cells with him to the Far East in 1953 to study hemorrhagic fever, which was killing American troops.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
