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overkill

UK/ˈəʊ.vəˌkɪl/US/ˈoʊ.vɚˌkɪl/
nounB2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,193 of 15,258neutral

Overkill is far more force or effort than the job needed. Sheer overkill, a bit of overkill, marketing overkill.

The word came from nuclear strategy, where overkill meant the capacity to destroy a target several times over, which was a real and much-debated feature of the arsenals. It has since softened into a mild joke about doing too much.

Wojciech Pędzich · CC BY 4.0

Definitions of overkill

  1. 1nounoverkillFar more force or effort than the job needed.B2

    “Hiring a lawyer to fight a parking ticket seems like overkill.”

overkill is an excess.

Where it comes from

  1. Middle English

    killen

  2. English

    kill

  3. English, today

    overkill

Built from

  • cullen · Middle English — to strike, beat, cut

From over- + kill. kill comes from Middle English killen, kyllen, cullen (“to strike, beat, cut”), of obscure origin. Cognate with Scots kele, keil (“to kill”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

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Related words

the cullen family

kill

overkill — used about once every 5,793 pages · #10,193 · point at the bar for the others