Wiktionary
vb. 1 To eliminate, or make extinct 2 To put an end to.
WordNet
v. kill en masse; kill on a large scale; kill many; "Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and homosexuals of Europe" [syn: exterminate]
Wikipedia
The killing off of a character is a device in fiction, whereby a character dies, but the story continues. The term, frequently applied to television, film and chronological series, often denotes an untimely or unexpected death motivated by factors beyond the storyline.
In productions featuring actors, the unwillingness or inability of an actor to continue with the production, for financial or other reasons (including illness, death, or producers' unwillingness to retain an actor), may lead to that character being "killed off" or removed from the storyline.
Usage examples of "kill off".
It's not enough to give me the family from Hell, it's not enough to make me gay in a hostile redneck societyoh, noyou've got to kill off my first love and make me go an entire trilogy pining after him, like some kind of medieval soap opera!
A couple of generations ago it was considered good form to kill off your business competitors if you could.
They were welcome to kill off one another to their little hearts' content, and certainly there was no desire to take on a bunch like this if there was no need to do so.
Here, writers are free to check in, to open up new rooms, new corridors, new intrigues, to unlink texts or create new links, to intrude upon or subvert the texts of others, to alter plot trajectories, manipulate time and space, to engage in dialogue through invented characters, then kill off one another's characters or even to sabotage the hotel's plumbing.
Diseases among the livestock might kill off or debilitate enough animals to edge the farmers into starvation.
Yet, they poured out their advice in streams, until the President was heartily sick of the whole business, and wished the War would find some way to kill off these nuisances.
And with most diseases, it's usually the symptoms that kill off the kids so quickly.
We can open with a boarding party, kill off a few constructs, lots of blood and guts there, take prisoners, and then cut to the cabin.
Was he to kill off Griffin so she could leech onto some rising third party?
I managed to get some bug spray out of my chest to kill off my attackers, so I enjoyed a relatively peaceful night before the ride in the morning.
Yes, yes, it was a splendid notion to kill off half the noblemen and ruin their families in the process—.