Murderous means out to kill. A murderous look across a courtroom, a murderous swing of a bat, the murderous glint in the villain's eye three pages before he does it.
It stretches well past actual killing. A murderous heat, a murderous work schedule, a murderous hill on a bike ride — anything punishing enough to feel like it is trying to finish you off. In news and legal writing you meet murderous intent and murderous rage, where the word stays literal. The adverb is murderously: murderously angry, murderously hot. And murderous describes the mood, the look or the act, never the person who did it — that person is a murderer.
1adjectivemurderousIntending to kill, or full of the wish to kill.
“He gave her a murderous look and walked out without a word.”
synonyms: homicidal, bloodthirsty, deadly
2adjectivebrutalSo severe or punishing that it feels like it could destroy you.
“They kept up a murderous pace for the last five kilometres.”
synonyms: brutal, gruelling, punishing
Murderous is murder with -ous bolted on, the same ending that turns danger into dangerous. Murder itself traces back to a Proto-Indo-European root written *mer-, which is about as deep as English words go. So the newest slang use — a murderous deadline — is a very old word being borrowed for effect.
Proto-Indo-European
*mer-
English, today
murderous
From murder + ous.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Word Building
First appears in chapter 25 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word