to mow down
9
8.8
- phrasal verb
- /moʊ daʊn/
- Offensive
:
masacrar
- The government is using mortars, aircraft-launched rockets, and machine guns to mow down crowds.
- mow down pedestrians
- mow down people
- mow down civilians
And the first wave goes and almost all of them get mowed down, right?
- And the first wave goes and almost all of them get mowed down, right?
- I'm not willing to take that risk on someone who mows down a mother and her child.
- So whether you use a gun to stop a grizzly bear from attacking you or you walk into a grade school and start mowing down kids.
- I, I, I haven't seen that movie, but in World War One, guys are in trenches and you're going to charge another trench against machine guns and they're getting mowed down.
- The AK is the perfect now it's it's it's meant to mow down everybody on that side indiscriminately at a coastal range.
Examples
-
And there was some guy who went into a House of worship with an automatic weapon and mowed down a whole bunch of people.
-
I'm not willing to take that risk on someone who mows down a mother and her child.
-
And the first wave goes and almost all of them get mowed down, right?
-
We're gonna get mowed down if we try to drive past them.
-
A killer with access to military style weaponry mows down innocent Americans in cold blood.
-
A drunken trucker who mowed down hundreds of people would certainly get jail time.
Blog text (11) -
They took aim at the few narrow exits from the bushes and mowed down the Paraguayans as they tried to emerge through them.
-
In April in Toronto, a van mowed down pedestrians, killing 10 people.
-
A killer with access to military style weaponry mows down innocent Americans in cold blood.
-
As the 116th moved toward the hedgerows, dozens of men were mowed down by enemy fire.
Synonyms
158
5.7
To kill a large number of people in a violent way
62
7.5
To kill someone on purpose
52
7.4
To shoot someone, often causing serious harm or death
48
7.4
To kill many people in a cruel way
13
7.7
Kill an entire group of people or animals so none are left
12
3.6
To make a person or thing fall to the ground, often by force
Antonyms
How Deadly
Surface Forms
Morphology
The image of 'mow' (cutting vegetation) plus 'down' yields a clear metaphor of cutting or knocking something to the ground, so learners can plausibly infer a sense of overwhelming, knocking down, or cutting people. However, the precise interpretation 'to kill or injure many people suddenly' is a violent, language-specific extension of that image and not fully predictable from the parts alone, so it requires some prior exposure.
Etymology
The verb mow down comes from the image of cutting plants with a mower: the machine mows and pushes them down, cutting everything in its path. So when people are mowed down, the picture is of many falling at once, which is why it means 'to kill or injure many people suddenly'.