kill
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "kill", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "kill" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "kill" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
kill is aEnglishverb. It means: To put to death; to extinguish the life of. Pronounced /kɪl/. It ranks #852 in English word frequency. Often confused with KL and Kim.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | kill |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /kɪl/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #852 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for kill is 4 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kɪl/. Corpus data places it at rank #852 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 18 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 4 documented wrong-spelling variants for kill, with forms such as "ikll", "kil", and "kkill". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "KL", "Kim", "kit", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English killen, kyllen, cüllen (“to strike, beat, cut”), of obscure origin. Cognate with Scots kele, keil (“to kill”). * Perhaps from unattested Old English *cyllan, from Proto-West Germanic *kwulljan, from Proto-Germanic *kwuljaną, from Proto-I… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is kill, spelled K-I-L-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To put to death; to extinguish the life of.
- 2To render inoperative.
- 3To stop, cease, or render void; to terminate.
- 4To amaze, exceed, stun, or otherwise incapacitate.
- 5To cause great pain, discomfort, or distress to; to hurt.
- 6To produce feelings of dissatisfaction or revulsion in.
- 7To use up or to waste.
- 8To overpower, overwhelm, or defeat.
- 9To force a company out of business.
- 10To punish severely.
- 11To strike (a ball, etc.) with such force and placement as to make a shot that is impossible to defend against, usually winning a point.
- 12To cause (a ball, etc.) to be out of play, resulting in a stoppage of gameplay.
- 13To succeed with an audience, especially in comedy.
- 14To cause to assume the value zero.
- 15To disconnect (a user) involuntarily from the network.
- 16To deadmelt.
- 17To sexually penetrate in a skillful way.
- 18To exert oneself to an excessive degree.
Etymology
From Middle English killen, kyllen, cüllen (“to strike, beat, cut”), of obscure origin. Cognate with Scots kele, keil (“to kill”). * Perhaps from unattested Old English *cyllan, from Proto-West Germanic *kwulljan, from Proto-Germanic *kwuljaną, from Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH- (“to throw, hit, hurt by throwing”). * Or, possibly a variant of Old English cwellan (“to kill, murder, execute”) (see quell). * Or, from Old Norse kolla (“to hit on the head, harm”), related to Norwegian kylla (“to poll”), Middle Dutch kollen (“to knock down”), Icelandic kollur (“top, head”); see also coll, cole). Compare also Saterland Frisian källe (“to hurt”), Middle Dutch kellen (“to kill, hurt”), Middle Low German kellen, killen (“to ache strongly, cause one great pain”) (whence German Low German kellen, killen (“to hurt, injure, torment, vex”)), Middle High German kellen (“to torment; torture”).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ikll,kil,kkill,klil
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for kill
Misspelling Variants of "kill"
Frequency rank: #852 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter K in our English index: