strike down

Verb

strike down (third-person singular simple present strikes down, present participle striking down, simple past struck down, past participle struck down or (rare or archaic) stricken down)

1. To kill (someone or something); to cause to die suddenly.
   • God will strike you down!
   • May the Lord strike down those sinners!
2. To knock down.
   • Throughout the country there were: rupture of telecommunications, resulting amongst other things from telegraph wires and posts overweighted by snow or struck down by gales; [...].1962 March, “The New Year Freeze-up on British Railways”, in Modern Railways, page 158
   • He was perched up top attending to the roof lantern when he was stuck down (literally) by a storm of "preposterous fury" (Bizarre Berkshire, D. Mackay 2011).2021 December 29, Stephen Roberts, “Stories and facts behind railway plaques: Reading (1840)”, in RAIL, number 947, page 56
3. To prostrate by illness.
4. To invalidate (a law, statute etc.)
   • Later, in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriages remaining in 16 states, all in the old Confederacy and border states.2004 October 29, Peter Wong, “Interracial-marriage ban used in Measure 36 comparisons”, in Statesman Journal, volume 152, number 214, Salem, OR, page 2A

   Antonyms:

   uphold