deathblow.

1. A blow or forceful act that kills a person or animal.

2. An act or event that brings something to an end or causes its failure.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• deliver a deathblow
• deal the deathblow
• the final deathblow

On the page

The account records a single deathblow after a long struggle.

Usage notes

Primary category: horror / gothic literary. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: Singular deathblow; plural deathblows. Commonness: moderately common (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: Direct entry read: killing stroke/act; act/event ending or causing failure. Death blow open spelling explicitly a variant. Two physical/figurative scopes; one lexical compound, not duplicated as a phrase or idiom. Individually reviewed for a precise writer function, not selected merely for rarity. Original definitions/examples; commonness editorial, not a corpus statistic. Genre suitability does not establish inherent fear or emotional intensity. Writing functions: a killing blow, an event that finally ends an enterprise.