stop someone's clock

Verb

stop someone's clock (third-person singular simple present stops someone's clock, present participle stopping someone's clock, simple past and past participle stopped someone's clock)

1. (slang) To kill someone.
   • "You wouldn't last thirty minutes if I wasn't behind you," Dandy Bob snapped. "Somebody would stop your clock, only they're afraid of me."2004, Bennett Foster, Gila City, page 147
   • Navarro aimed his cocked Colt at Homer Winters's fear-etched face. “Come and pick him up before I stop his clock.”2005, Ralph Compton, Bullet Creek

   Synonyms:

   annihilate, bag, baptize, bereave of life, blight, bring down, bump off, bury, cack, compromised to a permanent end

2. (slang) To clean someone's clock; to make incapable of action; to thwart.
   • Mom wasn't in no mood for lallygagging and she give him a look that stopped his clock.1936, Vincent McHugh, Caleb Catlum's America, page 23
   • Somebody who played a grim little war-game with him; not wanting to kill him, only to kill time, to stop his clock for a couple of hours.1981, James Barnett, The Firing Squad, page 206
3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see stop, clock.
   • Yet when Garry Kasparov failed to stop his clock after making a move in a World Championship match, it was his opponent, Anatoly Karpov, who was criticized for failing to alert him.2015, Andy Soltis, Chess Lists, page 11