terminate with extreme prejudice
"terminate-with-extreme-prejudice" is a 29-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“terminate with extreme prejudice” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 32
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To murder; to assassinate.
Corpus desk
Index EN-terminate-with-extreme-p · terminate with extreme prejudice · English
terminate with extreme prejudice · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 32 letters
- VOW-12 12 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "T" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | terminate with extreme prejudice |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 32 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “terminate with extreme prejudice” in English
Rare enough to double-check
terminate with extreme prejudice is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To murder; to assassinate.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for terminate with extreme prejudice, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: First appears c. 1969. Derives from US military intelligence and CIA documents, in news coverage of the Green Beret Case, and further popularized in the movie Apocalypse Now (1979). A play on the term terminate with prejudice when an employee’s employment i… The correct English form is terminate with extreme prejudice, spelled T-E-R-M-I-N-A-T-E- -W-I-T-H- -E-X-T-R-E-M-E- -P-R-E-J-U-D-I-C-E.
Definition
- 1To murder; to assassinate.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how terminate with extreme prejudice appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The government ordered the spies to be terminated with extreme prejudice: they did not want them to expose what they knew in a public trial.
...suggested that he either be isolated or ‘terminated with extreme prejudice.’ This term is said to be an intelligence euphemism for execution.
Etymology
First appears c. 1969. Derives from US military intelligence and CIA documents, in news coverage of the Green Beret Case, and further popularized in the movie Apocalypse Now (1979). A play on the term terminate with prejudice when an employee’s employment is terminated, meaning will not rehire employee to same position in future (i.e., prejudiced against rehiring), hence terminate definitively, i.e., kill.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.