Word.ws English Dictionary

kill your heroes

kill your heroes phrase: one should not idolize specific people (particularly celebrities), as this will distort one's perception of those one idolizes.

Phrase

kill your heroes

  1. (informal, often, sarcastic) One should not idolize specific people (particularly celebrities), as this will distort one's perception of those one idolizes.
    • Daevid believes the visa problem that removed him so abruptly from The Soft Machine in late August 1967 probably accelerated an inevitable split. He believes his role in the band was that of catalyst — and, as he notes, you've got to kill your heroes.2014, Marcus O’Dair, Different Every Time: The Authorised Biography of Robert Wyatt
    • Kill your heroes, stop doing it harder.2019, Will Larson, An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
    Synonyms:
    kill your idols

Synonyms of kill your heroes

Origin of kill your heroes

Perhaps influenced by kill your darlings.

Questions about kill your heroes

What does kill your heroes mean?
Kill your heroes means one should not idolize specific people (particularly celebrities), as this will distort one's perception of those one idolizes.
What part of speech is kill your heroes?
Kill your heroes is a phrase.

Words near kill your heroes in the dictionary

  1. kill trees
  2. kill two birds with one shot
  3. kill two birds with one stone
  4. Kill Van Kull
  5. kill with kindness
  6. kill your heroes
  7. kill your idols
  8. kill zone
  9. kill zones
  10. kill'd
  11. kill-buck

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kill your heroes (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)-Flame, not lame-kill your heroes.wav.

Cite this entry: “kill your heroes.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kill_your_heroes. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.