Word Count

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Exaggeration Has Me Killed

Stan Carey, a professional editor from Ireland, writes entertainingly about the English language on his blog Sentence First. Here Stan muses on the word "kill" and a special meaning it has in the colloquial English speech of Ireland.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has 14 separate entries for the verb kill, and one of these ("Deprive ... of vitality, activity, effect, etc.") seems close to a common colloquial usage in Hiberno-English. It's often heard and seen in the form killed out (with...):

This week has me killed out
After 7 exercises with chest I'm killed out
Its about two in the morning and I'm killed out.
I am killed out with the tiredness

Here killed out means tired, worn out, weary, exhausted; equivalent slang terms are wrecked and destroyed. Altogether is occasionally appended for emphasis ("I'm killed out altogether"), as distinct from the sense "in total" ("20 soldiers were killed altogether"). Hiberno-English killed can also carry a related meaning: of suffering from some affliction, whose effects often include tiredness or weakness:

I'm killed with the sunburn
The heat has me killed
I'm killed with the drought (Francis MacManus, The Man in the Trap)
They're killed with the thirst.
he is killed with the cough (The Coughing Old Man)
I'm killed with the hunger

There's usually an implication that the burden is temporary, or at least non-fatal. I suppose it's a kind of black comic relief that death is not as imminent as the language might suggest — a way of imagining control over it by allusion to it — though that doesn't mean that death doesn't arrive subsequently:

A young man died after injuries received in a row, and his friend says:- 'It is dreadful about the poor boy: they made at him in the house and killed him there; then they dragged him out on the road and killed him entirely, so that he lived for only three days after.' (from P. W. Joyce, English As We Speak It In Ireland)

But the context can also be festive and debauched:

And the two shawls killed with the laughing, picking his pockets, the bloody fool and he spilling the porter all over the bed and the two shawls screeching laughing at one another (James Joyce, Ulysses)

Sometimes the sound and spelling of the word are softened to kilt or kill't:

That was what kilt me! That was what drove the pain into my heart... (Gerald Griffin, The Collegians)
Says Jack Mitchil, "I am kilt! Boys, where's the back door?..." (William Makepeace Thackeray, The Battle of Limerick)
'I'm kilt all over' means that he is in a worse state than being simply 'kilt.' (Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent)
"I'm kill't out with the heat, Mam" (Brian Leyden, The Home Place, cited in Bernard Share, Slanguage)

Whew. I'm kilt out after that. Do you use these expressions, or an equivalent?

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Stan Carey is a scientist turned freelance editor from the west of Ireland. He shares his fascination with language, words and books on his blog, Sentence first, and on Twitter. Stan has a TEFL qualification, a history of polyglottism, and a lifelong love of stories and poetry. He writes articles about the English language for Macmillan Dictionary Blog. Click here to read more articles by Stan Carey.

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