mercy killing

1. 1.

   the act of killing someone painlessly (especially someone suffering from an incurable illness)

   Synonymseuthanasia

   Broaderkilling

Questions about mercy killing

What does mercy killing mean?

mercy killing means "the act of killing someone painlessly (especially someone suffering from an incurable illness)".

What is another word for mercy killing?

Close synonyms include euthanasia. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is mercy killing a common word?

mercy killing 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.