Word.ws English Dictionary

death blow

death blow is the alternative form of deathblow.

Meaning of deathblow

Noun

deathblow (plural deathblows)

  1. A strike or blow that leads to death, especially a coup de grâce.
    • He was also there at that fight when Hygelac folded under his deathblow.1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 41
    Synonyms:
    another nail in one's coffin
  2. (figuratively) Something that prevents the completion, or ends the existence, of a project etc.; a fatal setback.
    • The opening of the bridge dealt a deathblow to the ferry.

Forms of death blow

pluraldeath blows

Questions about death blow

What is death blow the alternative form of?
Death blow is the alternative form of deathblow.

Words near death blow in the dictionary

  1. death bed conversion
  2. death bed conversions
  3. death beds
  4. death bell
  5. death bells
  6. death blow
  7. death blows
  8. death book
  9. death books
  10. death by a thousand cuts
  11. death by a thousand paper cuts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: death blow (page history and authors); deathblow (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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