Timeline for Usage, origin and the possible Hollywood influence on "terminate" meaning "to kill."

Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0

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Jun 15, 2020 at 7:40	history	edited	CommunityBot		Commonmark migration
May 24, 2016 at 14:58	comment	added	Sven Yargs		...But the Ngram for "terminate with extreme prejudice" shows it as being very nearly as widespread in published writing in 1975 as it ever would be—and that's four years before Apocalypse Now. The Ngram for terminate in the sense of "kill" would be a much more sharply ascending graph, I'm sure, but Ngram can't separate that sense from the simpler "end" meaning.
May 24, 2016 at 14:54	comment	added	Sven Yargs		@Josh61: Unquestionably, Apocalypse Now (1979), for example, broadened public awareness of the phrase "terminate with extreme prejudice." And I suspect that The Terminator (1984) was hugely influential in popularizing terminate as a standalone synonym for assassinate. But I remember that public awareness of "terminate with extreme prejudice" was high from the moment newspapers and news magazines picked up on it as a U.S. military euphemism for assassination. The Vietnam War was very unpopular by 1969 anyway, and I think there was a backlash against the term's antiseptic blandness. ...
May 24, 2016 at 14:41	comment	added	user66974		I mean, how did the connotation of "to kill, assassinate" jumped from the military jargon into dictionaries as a "common" one?
May 24, 2016 at 7:27	comment	added	user66974		And from the military usage the expression became more common through movies, I suppose, or it would have remained confined within its original context.
May 23, 2016 at 20:51	history	edited	Sven Yargs	CC BY-SA 3.0	Tried to clarify my meaning in an awkwardly worded sentence.
May 23, 2016 at 20:42	history	edited	Sven Yargs	CC BY-SA 3.0	Added a note about the newness of definition 3 of "terminate" to the Eleventh Collegiate.
May 23, 2016 at 20:10	history	answered	Sven Yargs	CC BY-SA 3.0