kill off

Verb

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

1. (transitive) To eliminate, to make extinct.
   • We killed off the Dodo by over-hunting.
2. 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.
   • 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.2025 August 28, Gaby Hinsliff, “Taylor Swift: engaged, mummy-tracked and doomed to tradwifedom? You really haven’t been listening”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
3. (figuratively, transitive) To put an end to.
   • (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.1999 January 16, Bill Amend, FoxTrot
   • 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.2011 September 28, Tom Rostance, “Arsenal 2 - 1 Olympiakos”, in BBC Sport