Word.ws English Dictionary

kill one's darlings

kill one's darlings verb: to destroy things or characters, particularly in art, of which one is fond, often reluctantly in order to improve one's artistic output.

Verb

kill one's darlings (third-person singular simple present kills one's darlings, present participle killing one's darlings, simple past and past participle killed one's darlings)

  1. (idiomatic) To destroy things or characters, particularly in art, of which one is fond, often reluctantly in order to improve one's artistic output.
    • Someone asked William Faulkner what the supreme law of art was, and he replied in three words: "Kill your darlings!"1965, Raymond Léopold Bruckerger, The History of Jesus Christ, page 161
    • [Fans] won’t participate in online dialogues and events, visit message boards and chat rooms or design games. As a result, platforms for supplementary advertising aren’t built, starving even the shows fans profess to love […]. Aloof and passive fans kill their darlings.2008 January 20, Virginia Heffernan, “Art in the Age of Franchising”, in New York Times

Forms of kill one's darlings

third-person singular presentkills one's darlings
present participlekilling one's darlings
past participlekilled one's darlings
pastkilled one's darlings
alternative formmurder one's darlings

Origin of kill one's darlings

A piece of advice to prospective authors that they must kill their “darlings”, i.e. suppress overuse of their favorite expressions, tropes, characters, etc. Often attributed to William Faulkner (1897–1962), but already expressed earlier by Arthur Quiller-Couch (murder one's darlings); more recently popularized by Stephen King.

Questions about kill one's darlings

What does kill one's darlings mean?
Kill one's darlings means to destroy things or characters, particularly in art, of which one is fond, often reluctantly in order to improve one's artistic output.
What part of speech is kill one's darlings?
Kill one's darlings is a verb.
What is the past tense of kill one's darlings?
The past tense of kill one's darlings is killed one's darlings.

Words near kill one's darlings in the dictionary

  1. kill kits
  2. kill leader
  3. kill line
  4. kill me
  5. kill off
  6. kill one's darlings
  7. kill oneself
  8. kill or be killed
  9. kill screen
  10. kill screens
  11. kill shelter

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kill one's darlings (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-kill one's darlings.ogg.

Cite this entry: “kill one's darlings.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kill_one%27s_darlings. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.