kiss of death

1. 1.

   something that is ruinous

   “if this were known it would be the kiss of death for my political career”

   Broadercalamity

Questions about kiss of death

What does kiss of death mean?

kiss of death means "something that is ruinous".

Is kiss of death a common word?

kiss of death is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.