stop someone's clock
verb1
Slang To kill someone.
- "You wouldn't last thirty minutes if I wasn't behind you," Dandy Bob snapped. "Somebody would stop your clock, only they're afraid of me."2004, Bennett Foster, Gila City, page 147:
- Navarro aimed his cocked Colt at Homer Winters's fear-etched face. “Come and pick him up before I stop his clock.”2005, Ralph Compton, Bullet Creek:
1 more example
- I cannot let it stop my clock, I'm far from the end of my road.2016, Smiley Bonds, The People’s Hope:
2
Slang To clean someone's clock; to make incapable of action; to thwart.
- Mom wasn't in no mood for lallygagging and she give him a look that stopped his clock.1936, Vincent McHugh, Caleb Catlum's America, page 23:
- Somebody who played a grim little war-game with him; not wanting to kill him, only to kill time, to stop his clock for a couple of hours.1981, James Barnett, The Firing Squad, page 206:
2 more examples
- “He wasn't going to change his tune,” Tucker said. “So I stopped his clock. Now he knows not to bugger us about.”2011, Derek Robinson, Hullo Russia, Goodbye England:
- Those words, from her mouth, stopped my clock.2022, Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead:
3
Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see stop, clock.
- Yet when Garry Kasparov failed to stop his clock after making a move in a World Championship match, it was his opponent, Anatoly Karpov, who was criticized for failing to alert him.2015, Andy Soltis, Chess Lists, page 11: