Word.ws English Dictionary

winterkill

winterkill noun: the mortality resulting from lethal wintry conditions among a human, animal, and/or vegetal population.

Noun

winterkill (countable and uncountable, plural winterkills)

  1. The mortality resulting from lethal wintry conditions among a human, animal, and/or vegetal population.

Verb

winterkill (third-person singular simple present winterkills, present participle winterkilling, simple past and past participle winterkilled)

  1. (transitive) To kill by the conditions of winter, especially the effect of the cold, freezing.
    • From these data it is evident that the frequent low temperatures may have winterkilled many bare fields of common alfalfa before the ice sheets occurred the latter part of February 19221919, University of Wisconsin. Agricultural Experiment Station, Report of the director, volumes 37-46
    • The severe cold in conditions of only light snow protection is also reported to have winterkilled considerable areas of winter grains in Poland, Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia1972, Commonwealth Secretariat. Commodities Division, Commonwealth Economic Committee, Grain bulletin, volumes 18-19
  2. (intransitive) To die from the above effects of winter conditions.
    • Order new rose bushes to replace any that have winterkilled.1951 April 1, “Around the Garden; Future for Pot Plants”, in New York Times
    • Some lakes may have winterkilled but anglers will find fish if they take some time to look for them2004 May 20, “Utah's Top 10 fishing spots”, in Salt Lake Tribune, The

Forms of winterkill

Noun
pluralwinterkills
alternative formwinter-kill
alternative formwinter kill
Verb
third-person singular presentwinterkills
present participlewinterkilling
past participlewinterkilled
pastwinterkilled

Origin of winterkill

From winter + kill.

Questions about winterkill

What does winterkill mean?
Winterkill means the mortality resulting from lethal wintry conditions among a human, animal, and/or vegetal population.
What part of speech is winterkill?
Winterkill can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of winterkill?
The plural of winterkill is winterkills.

Words near winterkill in the dictionary

  1. winterized
  2. winterizer
  3. winterizers
  4. winterizes
  5. winterizing
  6. winterkill
  7. winterkilled
  8. winterkilling
  9. winterkills
  10. Winterkorn
  11. Winterkorns

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: winterkill (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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