death-dealing meaning: definition, quotations

death-dealing

adj

Causing or inflicting death, or capable of doing so; lethal.

1 more example

Busuli, the warrior whom he had stalked to the village, told him many of the tribal legends—how, many years before, his people had come many long marches from the north; how once they had been a great and powerful tribe; and how the slave raiders had wrought such havoc among them with their death-dealing guns that they had been reduced to a mere remnant of their former numbers and power.1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 127:

noun

The causing of death; murder or killing.

Sad lays were sung about the beset king, the vicious raids and ravages of Grendel, [...] how he would never parley or make peace with any Dane nor stop his death-dealing nor pay the death-price.1999, Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page 7: