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Glite Dictionary
💉 To make unconscious 🌈 To euthanize 🛏️ To help sleep 💻 To enter standby
to put to sleep

to put to sleep

25 5.8
Kill a sick or very old animal to stop its pain
  • phrasal verb
  • /pʊt tə slip/
  • NSFW
: eutanasiar
  • I didn't know how difficult it would be to decide to put your own pet to sleep.
  • put to sleep dogs
  • put to sleep animals
  • put to sleep cats

If you said we put our cat to sleep, what does it mean to you, Sadhguru for real, that they killed their cat Sadhguru yes.

Examples

  • We had to put your dog to sleep.

    Salvador (1986)

  • The pound will put her to sleep after a week.

    Come Early Morning (2006)

  • The vet had to put her to sleep.

    Trade (2007)

  • I'm having that cat put to sleep.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • Today, I needed to have my beautiful Maine Coon cat put to sleep.

    Blog text (3)

  • I just had to put my dog to sleep a couple weeks ago, and it just broke my heart, and the whole Pet Sematary thing went through my mind, like, what if, you know?

    Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary (2017)

  • A month after Melina was put to sleep, my father returned to the breeder and came home with another Great Dane.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • The veterinarian decided to put to sleep the injured cat to relieve its suffering.

  • After struggling with her illness for years, the elderly dog was finally put to sleep to end its pain.

  • To help ease the animal's suffering, the rescue organization had to put to sleep the stray dog.

Synonyms

to put down
vsto put to sleep
94 5.5

To kill an animal to stop its suffering

focuses on causing painless death specifically by a drug more often
to euthanize
vsto put to sleep
  • Specialized
22 8.5

Causing a person or animal to die without pain to stop suffering

is used only for animals, not for people
to put away
vsto put to sleep
3 7.7

To end an animal's life to stop its suffering

allows other humane methods and is not limited to injections
to euthanatize
vsto put to sleep
  • Specialized
9.9

To cause a painless death to stop a person or animal from suffering

is used only for animals, not for people
to mercy kill
vsto put to sleep
  • NSFW
8.6

Cause a person or animal to die without pain to stop suffering

is restricted to animals rather than people in use
to put out of someone's misery
vsto put to sleep
  • NSFW
7.3

To stop someone's suffering or worry, sometimes by ending their life

means specifically humane killing to stop suffering rather than general relief

Antonyms

rescue
730 1.0

An act of saving someone or something from danger

to revive
71 4.1

To make a person conscious again after fainting

Surface Forms

put to sleep infinitive
put to sleep past
put to sleep past participle
putting to sleep present participle
puts to sleep third person singular

Morphology

put + to + sleep

The meaning 'place into a low-power or inactive state' is directly derivable from combining 'put' (bring something into a state) with 'sleep' (a state of inactivity/rest) and fits the common English pattern 'put X to Y' meaning 'cause X to enter Y'. Although the phrase can have a different idiomatic sense (e.g., euthanasia) in other contexts, the device-related sense is a straightforward metaphorical extension of the literal constituents and would be understandable to a B1 learner who knows the words.

Etymology

Put to sleep for animals comes from the idea of giving a drug so the animal goes into a peaceful, final sleep instead of suffering. That's why people use it to mean 'to humanely kill an animal'.