MEANING
Powerful or dangerous enough to kill a person or another living thing.
Use it for
describing a substance capable of killing; identifying a danger that may cause death; distinguishing killing capacity from an already fatal outcomeExpresses the capacity to kill without necessarily claiming that a death has already occurred. Writing functions: Death / Mortality.
Words that belong together
- a lethal dose
- a lethal weapon
- lethal to humans
On the page
The clear liquid remained lethal even after years in the sealed bottle.
The gas could be lethal in a room with no ventilation.
Word forms
- Base
- lethal
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Usage notes
Adjective: a lethal dose; lethal to an organism. Usually not graded in its literal killing-capacity sense. More lethal occurs naturally when comparing effectiveness or probability of killing, not degrees of being dead. Register: neutral. Commonness: common (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).
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