Word.ws English Dictionary

kill time

kill time verb: to engage in an activity whose only purpose is to make the time seem to pass more quickly; to fill the time between activities.

Verb

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

  1. (informal, intransitive) To engage in an activity whose only purpose is to make the time seem to pass more quickly; to fill the time between activities.
    • She had nothing better to do, so she went to the bowling alley to kill time.
    • Mrs. Autumn […] lay in bed always till it was very late this being one of those happy expedients for killing time (as the fashionable phrase is) which, to discover, employs the inventions of persons of rank and fortune.1758, Charlotte Lennox, Henrietta, London: A. Millar, Volume 2, Book 4, Chapter 3, p. 129

Noun

kill time (plural kill times)

  1. The time it takes for something to kill something else.
    Synonyms:
    time to kill

kill time meaning in Thai and Vietnamese

kill time in Thai

make time seem to pass more quickly by doing nothing important
ฆ่าเวลา

kill time in Vietnamese

make time seem to pass more quickly by doing nothing important
giết thời gian, giết thì giờ

Synonyms of kill time

Forms of kill time

Verb
third-person singular presentkills time
present participlekilling time
past participlekilled time
pastkilled time
alternative formkilltime
Noun
pluralkill times

Words formed from kill time

Questions about kill time

What does kill time mean?
Kill time means to engage in an activity whose only purpose is to make the time seem to pass more quickly; to fill the time between activities.
What is kill time in Thai?
Kill time in Thai is ฆ่าเวลา. See Kill time meaning in Thai.
What part of speech is kill time?
Kill time can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of kill time?
The past tense of kill time is killed time.

Words near kill time in the dictionary

  1. kill teams
  2. kill the fatted calf
  3. kill the goose that lays the golden eggs
  4. kill the messenger
  5. kill the rabbit
  6. kill time
  7. kill trees
  8. kill two birds with one shot
  9. kill two birds with one stone
  10. Kill Van Kull
  11. kill with kindness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kill time (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-kill time.wav.

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