kill: [13] The Old English verbs for ‘kill’ were slēan, source of modern English slay, and cwellan, which has become modern English quell. The latter came from a prehistoric Germanic *kwaljan, which it has been suggested may have had a variant *kuljan that could have become Old English *cyllan. If such a verb did exist, it would be a plausible ancestor for modern English kill.
When this first appeared in early Middle English it was used for ‘hit’, but the meanings ‘hit’ and ‘kill’ often coexist in the same word (slay once meant ‘hit’ as well as ‘kill’, as is shown by the related sledgehammer); the sense ‘deprive of life’ emerged in the 14th century.
kill (v.)
c. 1200, "to strike, hit, beat, knock;" c. 1300, "to deprive of life," perhaps from an unrecorded variant of Old English cwellan "to kill" (see quell), but the earliest sense suggests otherwise. Sense in to kill time is from 1728. Related: Killed; killing. Kill-devil, colloquial for "rum," especially if new or of bad quality, is from 1630s.
kill (n.2)
"stream," 1630s, American English, from Dutch kil, from Middle Dutch kille "riverbed," especially in place names (such as Schuylkill). A common Germanic word, the Old Norse form, kill, meant "bay, gulf" and gave its name to Kiel Fjord on the German Baltic coast and thence to Kiel, the port city founded there in 1240.
kill (n.1)
early 13c., "a stroke, a blow," from kill (v.). Meaning "act of killing" is from 1814; that of "a killed animal" is from 1878. Lawn tennis serve sense is from 1903. The kill "the knockout" is boxing jargon, 1950.
双语例句
1. At the entry for " kill " , my thesaurus lists " murder " , " assassinate " and " waste " .
我的同义词词典在kill条目中列出murder, assassinate, waste 词条.
来自《简明英汉词典》
2. Don't try and double-cross me, Taylor, because I'll kill you.
别跟我耍花招，泰勒，要不我会杀了你。
来自柯林斯例句
3. They rob us, they infringe our rights, they kill us.
他们劫掠我们，侵犯我们的权利，对我们实施杀戮。
来自柯林斯例句
4. His objective was to kill the space station project altogether.
他的目的是使空间站项目全面停止。
来自柯林斯例句
5. This murderous lunatic could kill them both without a second thought.
