Word.ws English Dictionary

nonkilling

nonkilling adjective: not engaging in killing.

Adjective

nonkilling (not comparable)

  1. Not engaging in killing.
    • Hunger does not normally induce frog killing in a nonkilling laboratory rat. However, if that rat has had the experience of watching a rat kill frogs, ....1976, Kenneth Evan Moyer, The psychobiology of aggression, page 146
    • I'm a nonkilling accomplice in a felony murder — a robbery-murder. ... It's a defense to felony murder, for nonkilling accomplices2001, Jeff Evans, Undoing time: American prisoners in their own words, page 149

Noun

nonkilling (usually uncountable, plural nonkillings)

  1. (usually) Lack of killing; permitting to live.
    • […] respect of harmlessness to living beings and nonkilling of living beings.1993, Ven. S. Dhammika, Seven Pillar Edicts, 7, translation of original by Ashoka the Great
    • Buddhist belief inculcates nonkilling of sentient life […]1994, Grolier Incorporated, Academic American encyclopedia, page 165
  2. (countable, usually) An action or occurrence other than a direct killing (but possibly having a similar effect).
    • […] then its death is a moral wrong even if the result of "nonkillings" will be a marked decrease in the population of that part of the animal kingdom.1991, Kent Greenawalt, Religious Convictions and Political Choice, page 105
    • But actions in the world don't come neatly dividing into killings and nonkillings: the gray area of the concept shades smoothly1994, Ray Jackendoff, Patterns in the mind: language and human nature, page 200

nonkilling meaning in Tamil, Sanskrit, Tagalog and Arabic

nonkilling in Tamil

கொல்லாமை

nonkilling in Sanskrit

A precept or worldview
अहिंसा ahiṃsā

nonkilling in Tagalog

A precept or worldview
walang-pagpatay

nonkilling in Arabic

A precept or worldview
لَا قَتْل lā qatl
More languagesFewer languages
nonkilling in Indonesian
anti-pembunuhan
nonkilling in Thai
การไม่ฆ่า gaan mâi kâa

Examples of nonkilling in a sentence

  • (...) we encourage scientific research (...) to aid us in the transition to nonviolent, and nonkilling societies2007, 8th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, Charter for a World Without Violence:
  • […] but nonkilling of humans is a minimum characteristic2002, Glenn D. Paige, Nonkilling Global Political Science, page 1:
  • This also includes nonkillings that in the end eliminate the group, such as preventing births or forcibly transferring children out of the group2008, Heinz Duthel, Guilty as Charged! A Case for the International Criminal Court, page 20:

Forms of nonkilling

Adjective
alternative formnon-killing
Noun
pluralnonkillings

Origin of nonkilling

From non- + killing.

Questions about nonkilling

What does nonkilling mean?
Nonkilling means not engaging in killing.
What is nonkilling in Tamil?
Nonkilling in Tamil is கொல்லாமை. See Nonkilling meaning in Tamil.
How do you use nonkilling in a sentence?
(...) we encourage scientific research (...) to aid us in the transition to nonviolent, and nonkilling societies
What part of speech is nonkilling?
Nonkilling can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near nonkilling in the dictionary

  1. nonketoic
  2. nonketotic
  3. nonkeyboard
  4. nonkiller
  5. nonkillers
  6. nonkilling
  7. nonkillings
  8. nonkin
  9. nonkinase
  10. nonkinases
  11. nonkindergarten

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nonkilling (page history and authors); nonkilling (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-nonkilling.wav.

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