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slay
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
slay
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
man
▪ It looked as if the Elves would be slain to a man.
▪ The most serious allegation against him involved the November 1998 slaying of three men at an automobile body shop in Montebello.
▪ Homer says that he felt awe to slay a man who had been taught his divine art by the gods.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a slew of sth
▪ A whole slew of cheap motels are springing up west of town.
▪ He lost his hold on the bag and a slew of rice and chicken and ochre sauce splashed on to the carpet.
▪ It may embody a slew of things.
▪ No need for anyone to point out the unlikelihood of such a slew of benign effects occurring the same week.
▪ Online services like Napster helped generate interest in a slew of new computer products in recent months.
▪ The festive gala features a slew of activities for all ages.
▪ They had lost a slew of close games, were getting minimal production from their frontcourt and sporadic play from the perimeter.
▪ When the feud broke out into the open, it exposed a slew of corruption charges from both camps.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Coretta King is the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
▪ That guy really slays me!
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A Pump Wagon is dependent on its crew for mobility, so once its crew are all slain it can not move.
▪ Hercules slew Diomedes first and then drove off the mares unopposed.
▪ Now, detectives are investigating the possibility that a fourth woman may have been slain by the retired Army sergeant.
▪ Roll two dice scoring 4 and 6 a further 2 men slain.
▪ Tens of thousands were slain, drowned by waves, buried by earthquakes, struck by magical lightning.
▪ You'd slay them you would!
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Slay

Slay \Slay\, v. t. [imp. Slew; p. p. Slain; p. pr. & vb. n. Slaying.] [OE. slan, sl?n, sleen, slee, AS. sle['a]n to strike, beat, slay; akin to OFries. sl[=a], D. slaan, OS. & OHG. slahan, G. schlagen, Icel. sl[=a], Dan. slaae, Sw. sl?, Goth. slahan; perhaps akin to L. lacerare to tear to pieces, Gr. ????, E. lacerate. Cf. Slaughter, Sledge a hammer, Sley.] To put to death with a weapon, or by violence; hence, to kill; to put an end to; to destroy.

With this sword then will I slay you both.
--Chaucer.

I will slay the last of them with the sword.
--Amos ix. 1.

I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk.
--Shak.

Syn: To kill; murder; slaughter; butcher.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
slay

Old English slean "to smite, strike, beat," also "to kill with a weapon, slaughter" (class VI strong verb; past tense sloh, slog, past participle slagen), from Proto-Germanic *slahan, from root *slog- "to hit" (cognates: Old Norse and Old Frisian sla, Danish slaa, Middle Dutch slaen, Dutch slaan, Old High German slahan, German schlagen, Gothic slahan "to strike"). The Germanic words are from PIE root *slak- "to strike" (cognates: Middle Irish past participle slactha "struck," slacc "sword").\n

\nModern German cognate schlagen maintains the original sense of "to strike." Meaning "overwhelm with delight" (mid-14c.) preserves one of the wide range of meanings the word once had, including, in Old English, "stamp (coins); forge (weapons); throw, cast; pitch (a tent), to sting (of a snake); to dash, rush, come quickly; play (the harp); gain by conquest."

slay

"instrument on a weaver's loom to beat up the weft," Old English slæ, slea, slahae, from root meaning "strike" (see slay (v.)), so called from "striking" the web together. Hence the surname Slaymaker "maker of slays."

Wiktionary
slay

vb. 1 (context now literary English) To kill, murder. 2 (context literary English) To eradicate or stamp out. 3 (context by extension colloquial English) To defeat, overcome. 4 (context slang English) To delight or overwhelm, especially with laughter.

WordNet
slay
  1. v. kill intentionally and with premeditation; "The mafia boss ordered his enemies murdered" [syn: murder, hit, dispatch, bump off, polish off, remove]

  2. [also: slew, slain]

Wikipedia
Slay

Slay may refer to:

Usage examples of "slay".

First, to the will of those who slew Him: and in this respect He was not a victim: for the slayers of Christ are not accounted as offering a sacrifice to God, but as guilty of a great crime: a similitude of which was borne by the wicked sacrifices of the Gentiles, in which they offered up men to idols.

After the affray Bushart would certainly have been slain had he remained, so he induced the captain of the HUNTER to give him a passage to the first land reached.

As if the teachings of Anarchism in its extremest form could equal the force of those slain women and infants, who had pilgrimed to the King for aid.

He anticipated the hour of the attack, outstripped his tardy followers, and was pierced with a mortal wound, after he had slain with his own hand twelve of his boldest antagonists.

Syracuse was delivered by the Greeks, the apostate was slain before her walls, and his African friends were reduced to the necessity of feeding on the flesh of their own horses.

Typhon, his brother, slew him when the sun was in the sign of the Scorpion, that is to say, at the Autumnal Equinox.

Archmaester Benedict insisted that there had never been a war of five kings, since Renly Baratheon had been slain before Balon Greyjoy had crowned himself.

When they saw us, they pointed at Kamlot, and I heard them telling some of the sailors that he was the one who had slain the basto with a single sword thrust, a feat which appeared to force their admiration, as well it might have.

He mocked at my cowardice, and began a-reasoning on the matter with such powerful eloquence that, before we parted, I felt fully convinced that it was my bounden duty to slay Mr.

Once he was armed again Soldier was tempted to put on the brigandine for protection and begin slaying the owners of the fort.

His hungry brethren cannot, without a sense of their own injustice, extort from the hunter the game of the forest overtaken or slain by his personal strength and dexterity.

But immediately the young Republic emerged from the stresses of adolescence, a missionary army took to the field again, and before long the Asbury revival was paling that of Whitefield, Wesley and Jonathan Edwards, not only in its hortatory violence but also in the length of its lists of slain.

In truth, his mind had been fully occupied with matters far more significant than the miserable slaying of some fornicating malefactor in a Troidmallos alley.

After the death of Neg the Malefic, the necromancer whom Conan had slain, the young Cimmerian and Elashi had agreed to travel together until their paths parted.

But before the Mexicans murdered the mother of Geronimo and his wife and children, and the soldiers of the white-yes slew the Apaches they had invited to have food with them, and before Mangas Colorado was treacherously murdered, did the Apaches have reason to hate the Mexicans and the white-eyes?