kill off

From kill +‎ off.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /kɪl ɒf/
• (US) IPA^(key): /kɪl ɔf/, /kɪl ɑf/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: kill‧off

kill off (third-person singular simple present kills off, present participle killing off, simple past and past participle killed off)

1. (transitive) To eliminate, or make extinct.

   We killed off the Dodo by over-hunting.

2. (film, television, literature) Of writers or producers, to permanently take a character out of a television series or other work by purposefully and deliberately having them killed within the plot.

   The writers are killing off lots of people in the soap opera.

   • 2025 August 28, Gaby Hinsliff, “Taylor Swift: engaged, mummy-tracked and doomed to tradwifedom? You really haven’t been listening”, in The Guardian‎^[1], →ISSN:

     Bridget Jones’s creator Helen Fielding didn’t seem to know what to do with her once she’d married her Mr Darcy, and ended up killing him off to make Bridget interesting again.

3. (figurative, transitive) To put an end to.
   • 1999 January 16, Bill Amend, FoxTrot‎^[2]:

     (Jason) The only thing I had handy to send them was this one dinky little program I'd written for fun.
     (Mom) And it killed off interest?
     (Jason) Actually, it killed off the Internet.

   • 2011 September 28, Tom Rostance, “Arsenal 2 - 1 Olympiakos”, in BBC Sport‎^[3]:

     Marouane Chamakh then spurned a great chance to kill the game off when he ran onto Andrey Arshavin's lofted through ball but shanked his shot horribly across the face of goal.

   • 2019 November 20, Christian Wolmar, “DfT places fresh hurdles in the path of Heathrow link”, in Rail, page 52:

     There are many ways to kill off projects, and the Department for Transport is proving particularly adept at finding new ones.

   • 2022 July 26, Mike Isaac, “‘Operating With Increased Intensity’: Zuckerberg Leads Meta Into Next Phase”, in The New York Times‎^[4], →ISSN:

     The moment is reminiscent of other bet-the-company gambles, such as when Netflix killed off its DVD-mailing business last decade to focus on streaming.