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Glite Dictionary
to terminate with extreme prejudice

to terminate with extreme prejudice

9.9
To kill someone secretly and without pity
  • idiom
  • Offensive
translation icon : liquidar
  • The agents were ordered to terminate with extreme prejudice any threats to national security.

So his mission is terminate the colonel's command, terminate with extreme prejudice, Go take him out.

Examples

  • Intercept intruders and terminate with extreme prejudice.

    Death Collector (1988)

  • So his mission is terminate the colonel's command, terminate with extreme prejudice, Go take him out.

    Film Courage

  • The Shia want to "terminate with extreme prejudice."

    Blog text (34)

  • In the movie, the protagonist was instructed to terminate with extreme prejudice the corrupt officials.

  • To protect the mission, they had to terminate with extreme prejudice anyone who discovered their plan.

Synonyms

to remove
vsto terminate with extreme prejudice
  • Offensive
58 9.9

To kill someone on purpose, usually by a criminal group

is for secret decisive killings carried out ruthlessly in covert operations
to liquidate
vsto terminate with extreme prejudice
  • Offensive
9 9.3

To kill someone who is a threat

is for secret decisive killings carried out ruthlessly in covert operations

Antonyms

to save
∞ 1.0

Rescue someone or something from danger

to preserve
496 3.4

To keep people and things safe from harm or change

How Deadly

to exterminate
  • NSFW
60 6.9
to terminate with extreme prejudice
  • Offensive
9.9
to assassinate
  • NSFW
199 7.0
to kill
  • NSFW
∞ 1.0
to eliminate
  • NSFW
502 3.4

Surface Forms

terminate with extreme prejudice infinitive

Morphology

terminate + with + extreme + prejudice

The meaning 'to kill or eliminate someone' cannot be derived from the literal constituents: 'terminate' can mean 'end' but not specifically 'kill', and 'prejudice' (bias) does not provide an instrumental or intensifying sense that would predict lethal action. The phrase is a euphemistic, covert-operations idiom used in military/intelligence contexts, so its sense is language- and register-specific and would not be predictable to a B1 learner who only knows the component words.

Etymology

The phrase terminate with extreme prejudice comes from secret military and spy orders where officers used formal words to hide a deadly command. They used terminate to mean 'end' and extreme prejudice to show very harsh action, so the whole line quietly meant 'to kill' and today it is used to say 'to kill someone in a very harsh way'.