Etymology Journal ยท K
Kill time
Meaning
- To spend time doing something trivial or unproductive while waiting for something else to happen. It is usually done to pass the hours when you are bored.
Casual, indifferent
Used in a sentence
- We have an hour to kill before the movie starts.
- I played a game on my phone to kill time in the waiting room.
- Let us go walk around the mall to kill time.
The backstory
This idiom dates back to the late 16th century. It describes the sensation that time is moving too slowly, so one must perform an activity to make it expire faster.
Heard in
Nationwide
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