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slay

Archaic Terms
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

To kill violently or deliberately; to murder or destroy; to put to death with force; modernly also means to overwhelm with delight or impress greatly.

Detailed Definition
In archaic usage, “slay” means to kill, common in epic and biblical poetry. It conveys decisive, often heroic violence. The term’s finality suits tragedy or triumph. Poets use it to explore mortality’s certainty, where slaying defines honor or horror, reinforcing themes of fate, justice, and the warrior’s code in narrative and allegorical traditions.
Example
Example in poetry:
“The hero came to slay the dragon,” in an epic opening; In Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Lay on, Macduff, / And damned be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’”—though “slay” appears throughout Elizabethan drama; “She would slay doubt with truth”; “The frost slays the flower, not the root”; “Slay me with kindness, not with words”; The poet’s pen can slay tyrants.
Additional Notes
“Slay” in archaic usage strictly means to kill, often heroically or brutally; its modern slang sense (“slay the performance”) ironically repurposes this violence into triumph, but poetic contexts retain its lethal gravity.
Also Known As
kill murder assassinate
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