Other forms: slain, slaying, slays
To slay is to kill, especially in battle. Slay the dragon, slain in battle, the slaying of a king.
The past tense is slew and the participle slain, which is why the word survives in ballads and headlines while sounding archaic in conversation. Slaying is the American news word for a killing. In modern slang, slay means to do something brilliantly — she slays — and that use is now far commoner among younger speakers than the original. Note slaughter, which is the same root, and onslaught.
1verbslayTo kill, especially in battle.
“In the legend, Saint George slays a dragon to save a princess.”
slay is a killing.
Old English slean meant to strike as well as to kill, from a Germanic root about hitting. Slaughter, sledgehammer and onslaught all come from it, and the killing sense is a narrowing of a plain blow.
Proto-Indo-European
*slak- — to hit, strike, throw
Proto-Germanic
*slahaną — to hit, strike; to kill
Proto-West Germanic
*slahan
Old English
slēan — to hit, punch, strike; to kill
Middle English
sleen
English, today
slay
From Middle English sleen, slen, from Old English slēan (“to hit, punch, strike; to kill”), from Proto-West Germanic slahan, from Proto-Germanic slahaną (“to hit, strike; to kill”), from Proto-Indo-European slak- (“to hit, strike, throw”). 2 Cognate with gsw schlaa (“to beat, hit”), gmw-cfr schlage, schlon, schloon (“to beat, hit, strike”), Dutch and Low German slaan (“to beat, hit, strike”), German schlagen, schlahen, schlahn (“to beat, hit, strike”), lb schloen (“to beat, defeat, hit”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish slå (“to beat, hit, strike”), Faroese sláa (“to beat, strike”), Icelandic slá (“to hit, strike”), Gothic 𐍃𐌻𐌰𐌷𐌰𐌽 (“to hit, smite, strike”). Related to slaughter, onslaught.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA