Word.ws English Dictionary

thrill kill

thrill kill noun: an act of murder motivated solely by the murderer's desire to have a very exciting experience.

Noun

thrill kill (plural thrill kills)

  1. (idiomatic) An act of murder motivated solely by the murderer's desire to have a very exciting experience.
    • "It was a thrill kill. Robbery was an afterthought. This is one of the most senseless murders we've had down there in years."1988 March 9, Sheridan R. Hansen, “Police arrest 2 Utah Count teenagers for questioning in Las Vegas shooting”, in Deseret News, retrieved 17 May 2013, page B3
    • "[T]his essentially was a killing for no reason, a thrill kill. . . ," said Attorney Donald Macomber.2012 April 12, “Supreme Court Hears Appeal of Colin Koehler's Life Sentence”, in WABI TV, retrieved 17 May 2013
  2. (attributive, usually hyphenated) Of, pertaining to, or being such an act of murder.
    • We all know that plenty of kids took to Route 66 after reading “On the Road,” but few juveniles committed thrill-kill murders after paging through “Crime and Punishment.”2007 September 23, David Bowman, “Torchlit Crit”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Forms of thrill kill

pluralthrill kills
alternative formthrill killing

Words formed from thrill kill

Questions about thrill kill

What does thrill kill mean?
Thrill kill means an act of murder motivated solely by the murderer's desire to have a very exciting experience.
What part of speech is thrill kill?
Thrill kill is a noun.
What is the plural of thrill kill?
The plural of thrill kill is thrill kills.

Words near thrill kill in the dictionary

  1. thriftstore
  2. thriftstores
  3. thrifty
  4. thriftyness
  5. thrill
  6. thrill kill
  7. thrill killer
  8. thrill killers
  9. thrill killing
  10. thrill killings
  11. thrill kills

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thrill kill (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: En-au-thrill kill.ogg.

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