To end a creature's life, usually through violence. Depending on who or what you kill, it may or may not be a crime. It's a crime to kill most human beings (unless you killed them to keep them from killing you or another person -- that's what self-defense is all about), but it is not a crime to kill an insect. Some people become killers on purpose, some by negligence, some by accident.

Also, to destroy the effectiveness of a group, organization, event, or object. You can kill a program, legislation, an advertisement, a keg party, and many other things. You can even kill love, but there's far too little of that in the world, so I don't recommend it.

I'd sorta like to tell you what it feels like to kill someone, but I can't, because I haven't. I'd like to tell you what other people say it's like to kill someone, but I won't because it's irrelevant. Everyone who kills someone feels something different -- some people enjoy it; some people seek out the opportunity to kill again; some people hate it; some people laugh; some people weep; some people swear off violence; some people become religious; some people give up religion; some people keep it a secret; some people confess; some people commit suicide. There are as many different reactions as there are killers on the planet.

As for the people on the other side of the gun/knife/automobile/blunt object... they just die.
Kill flags in the Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH) system
kill -godfather PID 

Rather amusing flag that kills the process with a quick shot to the head and leaves a gif of a horse's head on your desktop.

kill -driveby
kills the process on either side of the one you entered

kill -shotgun
kills all the processes in the general vicinity

kill -cia
kills the process but makes it look like natural causes.

=)

One of the most useful UNIX commands around. When most people think about kill, they think about in the -9 or -15 sense, which actually terminates the process in question. But there is so much more you can do with kill.

Many programs let you change their behavior by signaling them. For example, inetd and httpd will re-read their configuration files if you send them SIGHUP, which looks like:

kill -1 PID

init will do different things on SIGHUP, SIGUSR1, SIGINT, and SIGWINCH.

My favorite "alternative kill signals" are SIGSTOP and SIGCONT. I work in a computational chemistry lab where we do a lot of number crunching. From time to time I will want to run a job on a machine and find that there are already jobs running there. While I could be a complete bastard and become root and kill the offending process(es), I prefer (as do my colleagues) to become root and do:

kill -19 PID

This effectively "pauses" the process in question, allowing me to run my job right away. When I am done, I just:

kill -18 PID

and the "paused" job continues merrily on its way. Usually the owner of the process is none the wiser.

So lets not pigeon-hole the kill command as the serial murderer of the UNIX world, and instead realize its potential for much more devious and less destructive uses.

For a full listing of the signal numbers for kill try:

rangek@pinot-noir rangek $ kill -l 1) SIGHUP 2) SIGINT 3) SIGQUIT 4) SIGILL
5) SIGTRAP 6) SIGABRT 7) SIGBUS 8) SIGFPE 9) SIGKILL 10) SIGUSR1 11) SIGSEGV 12) SIGUSR2 13) SIGPIPE 14) SIGALRM 15) SIGTERM 17) SIGCHLD 18) SIGCONT 19) SIGSTOP 20) SIGTSTP 21) SIGTTIN 22) SIGTTOU 23) SIGURG 24) SIGXCPU 25) SIGXFSZ 26) SIGVTALRM 27) SIGPROF 28) SIGWINCH 29) SIGIO 30) SIGPWR

Let's not forget the system call! (jesus, I have to stop noding C functions...)
    int kill( pid_t pid, int sig );
pid_t is defined in sys/types.h, and the function is prototyped in signal.h.

The pid arg can have special meaning. If it's zero, the current process and all children are sent the signal. If it's -1, all processes are sent it, except pid 1. Otherwise, it specifies a pid.

As for the second arg, see unix signals.

If you're having a bad day, the sort of bad day characterised by a superfluity of stupid people in your face, you may find solace in the following manner:

If you're alone you can speak aloud, if not, just speak internally. "Kill." Include the fullstop.

"Kill."

"Kill."

"Kill."

Repeat and repeat. Visualise those who have been oppressing you with their inadequacies today, or if it's been a really bad day, just visualise indiscriminate killing. Perhaps you feel drawn to an orgy of violence and gore. Or maybe a fit of beserk martial arts, throwing people away like toys in the ultimate tantrum of shock and impulse. Alternatively you may simply wish a dreadful but non-specific cloud of malice and darkness and hate on your foes, channelling pure rage and fury through the otherspace of the shared subconscious unto, onto, into those most deserving.

"Kill."

"Kill."

"Kill."

You might feel the urge to flinch away from these feelings, tell yourself "These are bad thoughts. Nobody deserves death." Shut up. Shut up little voice. You are not wanted now.

Remind yourself why you are channeling this pain. Remember where the pain originated - in you. It is your pain, and they put it there. They put pain in you, and it is not nice. Let them have it back. Let them have it all back in spades, and then some.

"Kill."

Review the point of hurt. The moment when you should have told him No. When you should have stopped in your tracks, and just as she turned round, just as she started to say "wha-" you would say it. "Where the fuck do you get off..."? The point when he reduced you and your plans to "...but seriously, ..." there you should have passed your fist through the line of his jaw, should have ensnared her neck with your forearms - a jerk - a pull - ... a 'crick', should have dropped to your knees, expressing your pain, the hurt she had done, then risen, risen, first one foot, the other, as she recovered from her surprise, a roar, a bellow to the sky, to summon the rage, bring it forth, from the sky, from the earth, into the centre of your chest and then, like an orgasm of fury, a beam of pure hatred down your arms and into her soul, shrivelling, burning, crushing, killing. Should have, would have, will do ...next time.

Rest for a moment, let the wave pass, enjoy the tickle in your stomach, rest, rest. Then start again slow...

"Kill."

Who are they anyway? You're creative, you work, you're always learning, always improving yourself, thinking about things, what are they doing? Watching TV? Checking the scores? They have no idea. They just are. They exist and they consume and they complain about the price of fuel, and they are worth nothing. You are worth nothing, but at least you know, at least you think about the meaning of worth. Yet here you are. That they dare to exist alongside you is almost bearable, but that they actually define their own superiority by the things that make you better? Indeed that which they think they know about you, when there is so much they would not even understand, let alone believe.

"Kill."

"Kill."

Oh you have more hate. Dig that shit up and feel for the pure stuff below. The impure pain and misery and stress of your daily existance distilled and separated down through many levels of emotion and confusion and disbelief, that sweet perfect wrath, stoke that furnace up, a thud as the air itself ignites around your body, your clothes burn away leaving you a perfect elemental point of fire and fume and sin.

"Kill."

You are the Bad One. Hatred incarnate, the world falls away below you revealing a dark and simple reality thereunder: the fools fall from above, you catch and destroy them, their bodies pile below, nothing escapes, You Kill All.

"Kill."

Now see that enemy, that impure imbecile, tumbling toward you. They think they are good. They think they are righteous. Blind to their irrelevance, their flaws, their ignorance. You have no such failing, for you are sure of your flaws, you know you know little, you know and yet your constitution is untarnished, for your will is pure. Confusion, belief, faith, all are crushed beneath the hard fact: There is no Truth. There is only Chaos. And you are the Spirit of Entropy. And You

"Kill."

And so you transcend. Let the wave of euphoria wash over you, let your soul ring like a crystal bell, a shell of pure will, the force of being expands around you at the speed of light, beginning its long journey, irradiating the cosmos.

"Kill."

Someone has found themself at your mercy, and you have decided to kill them. And you do, and they die. What is that?

"Kill."

Is it wrong? It feels ... it feels like something. It exists. To kill. That is real.

"Kill."

People have killed for ... millenia. People have been killing since before they were people. In fact if there's one thing that people, that animals, that life needn't do, that is not necessary to survive, it's to kill for any reason other than food. And yet killing has always happened. For reasons. Or not.

"Kill."

Killing is the original, first unnatural act. The first step away from nature, on the long road to communication, community, society, it is the precursor to everything that we are. They killed before they were warm blooded. They killed before they were mammals, before they were man, before there were gods, before houses, before fire, before clothing or machines, or words or systems. Before right or wrong. They Killed.

"Kill."

If killing predates morality, how can killing be fundamentally wrong? Unless the very first unnatural behaviour was 'wrong' and if so, is there not a case to say that everything else that followed is also wrong?

"Kill."

To an individual person, a living, self-aware conscious person, with thoughts and memories and emotions and feelings, to be killed feels wrong. It is not what one wants. Right?

"Kill."

What is that final communication, the pure meaning passed from victim to killer, kept thereafter never to be given again, the last act of its source?

"Kill."

What is the last message passed the other way, from killer to victim? What is it that they know as they die?

"Kill."

What is that feeling, that final emotion as sensation starts to disappear, as the victim realises they are slipping. That they are dying. No, that they are being Killed. Someone else is going to live on with this moment.

"Kill."

But then even that person will die. And then the moment will be truly lost - for the unspoken communication could never be passed on second hand. So the moment is gone.

"Kill."

And people have been killing each other forever. All those moments. All those last pure moments of meaning, as the killer feels their victim die, as a person, a fellow, a being becomes a pile of meat, a lump of stuff.

"Kill."

And people are killing each other Right Now. Very likely, someone is dying, is being killed at this moment. You know it. You feel it. Are you a party to it? Is there guilt here? Should you be invading this moment? Or are you finally doing the right thing of paying attention to these killings?

"Kill."

The killer is finishing, the victim is on the point of death. They die.

"Kill."

"Kill."

For the full effect of this meditation, sit somewhere quiet, holding a weapon of some kind. Stare at it, rock back and forth, consider the simplicity of its operation, its use. The blade, hard material shaped to exert pressure exceeding the structural strength of organic matter, entering, penetrating and disrupting balanced systems, altering them beyond their natural ability to repair in time, so that the system can no longer maintain support for the substrate of awareness, which inevitably fails, and is overwhelmed by bigger natural processes. The bullet, chemistry pushed to the precipice of an energetic clifftop, a gentle shove away from absolute commital, metalwork arranged to contain the release, direct its energy to a pebble, to throw it through flesh. The gun, machinery designed to facilitate the disorder of biology, careful control of excessive forces to disturb small ecosystems past their ability to recover.

"Kill."

To kill. To take life. Something is alive, and you have the power to make that life stop.

"Kill."

What is? What is not? Not easy questions. But harder still: the point of change. From alive to dead. The point where it starts becoming not.

"Kill."

"Kill."

With all this, how can you commit not to kill? It is so important to humanity. So much of who and what we are, what we define ourselves as is directly involved in killing. To say "I will not kill.", just like that, without careful thought is to express utter disdain for the gift of self awareness. Surely to go through your entire life without killing once is to miss out on a whole aspect of humanity. Naturally you only get to die once, but perhaps an opportunity to be killed might not be fundamentally bad just because of what it means. If you must go, perhaps being killed by another might be a far richer experience, a more relevant pathway than many of the other deaths.

Much time is spent thinking deeply about number, about language, love, wine, battle, art - I propose that killing has as much depth as any of these, if not more. Killing, the original and most profound example of will overcoming nature.

"Kill."

Meditating is a good way to find a deeper understanding of your personal experience of life. It can help you find balance and meaning, restore emotional stability and peace. It can also lead to euphoric revelations and epiphanies. However it's very hard to meditate when highly emotionally excited. I find that this method of meditating fluidly through the throes of passion, encouraging the feelings to play out and then following the experience towards a more peaceful yet consistent set of percepts highly effective in calming the fuck down without having to tear anyone's head off. Controlled fantasy and meditation on killing is a lot better for lifestyle prospects than a violent nervous breakdown.

Kill (?), n.

A kiln. [Obs.] Fuller.

 

© Webster 1913


Kill, n. [D. kil.]

A channel or arm of the sea; a river; a stream; as, the channel between Staten Island and Bergen Neck is the Kill van Kull, or the Kills; -- used also in composition; as, Schuylkill, Catskill, etc.

 

© Webster 1913


Kill, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Killed (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Killing.] [OE. killen, kellen, cullen, to kill, strike; perh. the same word as cwellen, quellen, to kill (cf. Quell), or perh. rather akin to Icel. kolla to hit in the head, harm, kollr top, summit, head, Sw. kulle, D. kollen to kill with the ax.]

1.

To deprive of life, animal or vegetable, in any manner or by any means; to render inanimate; to put to death; to slay.

Ah, kill me with thy weapon, not with words !
Shak.

2.

To destroy; to ruin; as, to kill one's chances; to kill the sale of a book. "To kill thine honor." Shak.

Her lively color kill'd with deadly cares.
Shak.

3.

To cause to cease; to quell; to calm; to still; as, in seamen's language, a shower of rain kills the wind.

Be comforted, good madam; the great rage,
You see, is killed in him.
Shak.

4.

To destroy the effect of; to counteract; to neutralize; as, alkali kills acid.

To kill time, to busy one's self with something which occupies the attention, or makes the time pass without tediousness.

Syn. -- To murder; assassinate; slay; butcher; destroy. -- To Kill, Murder, Assassinate. To kill does not necessarily mean any more than to deprive of life. A man may kill another by accident or in self-defense, without the imputation of guilt. To murder is to kill with malicious forethought and intention. To assassinate is to murder suddenly and by stealth. The sheriff may kill without murdering; the duelist murders, but does not assassinate his antagonist; the assassin kills and murders.

 

© Webster 1913


Kill (?), n.

1.

The act of killing.

"There is none like to me!" says the cub in the pride of his earliest kill.
Kipling.

2.

An animal killed in the hunt, as by a beast of prey.

If ye plunder his kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride.
Kipling.

 

© Webster 1913

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