kill stealer
- noun
- /kɪl ˈstiːlər/
- Jargon
:
ladrón de asesinatos
- He earned a reputation as a kill stealer after repeatedly taking the finishing blow.
Examples
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The game discourages kill stealers by rewarding teamwork instead of individual kills.
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Nobody likes a kill stealer in the team because it ruins the fun for everyone.
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That player is such a kill stealer!
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I can't stand kill stealers in this game.
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Players often get frustrated with a kill stealer who claims the credit for kills they didn't earn.
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In multiplayer games, a kill stealer is someone who takes the final hit on an enemy, ruining the teamwork.
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Being labeled a kill stealer can lead to players being ostracized from their gaming group.
Antonyms
How Selfish
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'kill' (the act/result of killing) combined with 'stealer' (one who steals) yields 'one who steals kills/credit for kills.' The agentive formation and straightforward semantics are predictable in English (and mirrored in many languages), so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would be able to infer the MWE meaning, despite it being gaming register jargon.
Etymology
The noun kill stealer comes from multiplayer games: one player does most of the work to defeat an enemy, but another player 'steals' the final hit and the kill, so the stealer gets the credit. That's why it means a player who 'takes the kill' or the reward someone else earned.