Illustrative Context

They started fighting. He killed him.

Target Sense

• Most generic and neutral transitive verb for killing in the literal sense of ending the life of a living being.
• The lexeme selected must be applicable to killing humans (as in the illustrative context), but preferably not exclusively so. In most languages (as in English) the most basic, default term is also applicable to killing animals or even also plants.
• Do not, however, select a term specific (or predominantly applied) to killing only humans, e.g. murder, unless the language has no basic ‘kill’ lexeme that is wider and more generic.
• Do not select a term specific (or predominantly applied) to killing only animals, e.g. slaughter, or plants.
• Select the most neutral, basic term, i.e. avoid all terms that are narrower in that they bear additional and more specific meanings or overtones, including emotionally charged or judgmental ones, e.g.:
  • Avoid intensive terms stressing the violence, brutality or number of people killed, e.g. massacre.
  • Avoid euphemistic terms, e.g. euthanise.
  • Avoid terms that are predominantly figurative, e.g. for ‘killing’ pain, a plan, hopes, etc..
• Avoid terms that are specific to or predominantly used in a non-default register, e.g. literary slay, slang do in, or legal terms implying premeditation, intention or sentencing, e.g. murder, execute.
• The basic term in a language may have originated in some such register, but since lost those connotations and become simply the normal default term for kill. If so, then it is indeed now the lexeme in the IE-CoR target sense, and should be selected.
• Avoid narrower terms specific to particular ways of killing, e.g. slay, shoot (dead), German erschießen.
• Avoid narrower terms that specifically denote or imply that the agent is non-animate, e.g. diseases ‘killing’ people.
• Some languages use a causative construction of the type make die, and may thus share the same root as used in the separate IE-CoR meaning die. This is not necessarily an issue, so long as this lexeme is the basic, most generic and neutral verb for kill in the language, and therefore should indeed be the entry for this meaning. Certainly, do not provide an alternative lexeme simply out of a preference for a morphologically simplex stem, if that lexeme is less basic or generic than the causative construction.
• See also the target specification for the separate IE-CoR meaning die.