Can I use the word "mill" as a synonym for "destroy"?

Question

"Mill" is usually used to describe the process of making flour (grinding), to describe a wind or water mill, or a factory.

Since the process of milling or grinding consists of making small pieces or powder out of objects, I was wondering if the word "mill" can be used figuratively as in kill, destroy, obliterate or tear to pieces?

For instance, in the context of a competitive computer game, would it make sense to say something like "I was milled" as in "I was obliterated" when losing a game as a kind of way to add a bit of color to the expression?

Answer 1

You could, but I think it would take an explanation. (Though after the explanation it does make sense.) It's certainly not an established sense of the word by any imaginational stretch, though Wiktionary does have one meaning of mill that comes somewhat close:

(transitive, slang) To beat; to pound

Their quotations, however, are a little different from how you seem to want to use it.

If you'd like to make your expression more colorful, you could use the verb to cream, which has your intended meaning. Wiktionary gives:

(slang) To obliterate, to defeat decisively.
We creamed the opposing team!

Answer 2

Something that none of the other answers have brought up so far is that mill already has an established technical meaning in certain subsets of the gaming community.

In the trading card game Magic: The Gathering, the verb mill is defined to mean "to place that many cards from the top of a player's deck into the graveyard [a discard zone]". This is defined in 701.13 of the Magic: The Gathering comprehensive rules.

For a player to mill a number of cards, that player puts that many cards from the top of their library into their graveyard.

For someone unaccustomed to the Magic subculture, mill might seem like an unusual name for this effect. It derives from the card Millstone, an early card printed with this effect. In fact, the rules text of the latest printing of Millstone shows how this word is used in this gaming context:

Target player mills two cards.

Because Magic has an outsized influence on the trading-card game genre as one of the first (and one of the most popular) trading-card games, the term mill has found usage in other trading-card game communities for analogous effects.

For example, a "Mill Rogue" deck in the game Hearthstone is built around forcing the player's opponent to draw too many cards from their deck, thus wasting the extra cards. The entry for "mill" on the Hearthstone wiki even acknowledges the origins of the term in Magic:

Milling itself is a trope imported from Magic the Gathering (MTG) to Hearthstone (HS) vocabulary. The trope namer, Millstone, was the first card in MTG to feature the mechanic of directly removing cards from decks.

Similarly, Yu-Gi-Oh also has the concept of "Mill Decks", again attributing the concept to Magic:

The name "Mill Deck" comes from Millstone, a card in the first widely-popular TCG, Magic the Gathering.

In summary the word mill has a very strongly established technical meaning in at least one gaming genre. Using this word in a different way might lead to confusion if the people you are talking to also happen to be card-game players and are familiar with this specific usage of the word!

Answer 3

The word mill already has a metaphorical meaning. The expression

They've gone through the mill,

means that they have gone through a very difficult experience. [See Cambridge dictionary and Merriam-Webster dictionary.] It doesn't mean they've died.

So you would be fighting to establish another meaning for a variant of an already established idiom.

Answer 4

"I got pulverized".

Literally, "reduced to fine particles, powder".

That's an existing way of saying, in American English, possibly other Englishes too, that you were soundly defeated in a game or competition, or in other contexts too, where you emerge from the ordeal, whatever it was (a legal hearing, an oral exam, a presentation before management or the board of directors, a fist-fight, etc) feeling destroyed.

It can be used as a threat:

I'm gonna pulverize you.

Here's a use in a newspaper story about Sarah Paretsky, an author of detective novels whose protagonist is a woman detective, showing (obliquely) that the phrase can shade from the colloquial into the so-called "hard-boiled" lingo that seeks to emulate the talk of ruffians:

Tough and independent, V.I. (only paternalistic throwbacks call her Vicki) lives alone and likes it. She packs a gun, drinks Johnnie Walker Black Label scotch and is a Chicago Cubs fan. Sublimely indifferent to what people think of her, she tosses bills in the trash and sleeps with men who take her fancy. V.I. gets beaten up at least once in every book, but not in a woman-as-victim way: She can pulverize a man’s jaw with a single blow, and it takes at least two, sometimes four, thugs to overpower her.

^{A WOMAN OF MYSTERY : Like V.I. Warshawski, her hard-boiled Chicago detective, Sara Paretsky goes through life with her elbows out and her heart on her sleeve.} Los Angeles Times. DEC. 22, 1991

Answer 5

No.

"Milling" by itself is a specific physical transformation already:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milling_(machining)

It's a way of removing material from the surface of an object, similar to but distinct from grinding.

More generally, "mill" refers to industrial worksites that were traditionally powered by waterwheels or wind vanes. So watermills and windmills power the millstones that grind grain, but they also power the sawmills and lumbermills that shape wood into boards. Later, textile mills drove the British industrial revolution. I'm not sure whether steel mills ever were water powered, and I'm similarly unclear on the origin of powder mills.

Bottom line, "mill" is crammed full of meanings already, and would not mean "destroy" without additional context. In your example, it would only make sense to say "I was milled" if the game was about grinding corn, or if it was part of a larger metaphor: "The other team bagged me up, took me to the windmill, and milled me to dust. Now I'm just a bowl of sad cornmeal." (It would be a pretty weird metaphor, but it would be clear.)

Answer 6

You can do this if you like. The problem you encounter is that few people will pick up on the analogy with milling grain, since few people now live on a farm or work on a farm.

In the United States it’s about 2 percent, a little more in Europe and perhaps the strong economies of East Asia. But there are also major economies that depend on rice rather than wheat, which is the major grain that gets milled.

Answer 7

A 'mill' is also a fight, a boxing or wrestling match, with 'to mill' as the verb. Victorian slang, but still current for readers of Frazer McDonald books.

The mills of Proverbs that grind slowly, yet grind exceeding small is a description of Justice, slow but inevitable.

With two possible interpretations, this seems a risky use of 'to mill' to mean 'to kill' and not 'to fight' or 'to judge after death', both of which may be too close for comfort.

Context is everything. You could describe a First World War infantry charge as 'throwing a million men into the mill' and it would be understood.

Answer 8

Yes, the extended sense of the verb mill in slang goes as far as killing. It appears that this slang usage originated in Thieves' cant. Green's Dictionary of Slang lists this sense as below and the earliest citation is from 1612:

4. to kill, to murder.

1612 Dekker O per se O L2: They are sworne neuer to disclose their skill in Canting to any Householder for, if they do, the other Maunderers or Roagues Mill them (kill them).

Note: The above finding provides proof that the verb mill was used with the intended sense; but per its usage and citations, it can be considered archaic. However, within the realm of slang and figurative usage; this sense doesn't have to have a dictionary entry, and the context can determine its sense. In slang, there can be semantic extensions of the verb mill; which extends from its literal sense: to grind down, to break into small parts.

Answer 9

Milling as per RKirk remains in current usage within British Army training :

Milling is a training activity in the British airborne infantry. For a fixed period, two opponents punch each other in the head as aggressively as possible without evasion.

Wikipedia: Milling (military training exercise)

As such it is violence for the sake of violence, so quite a good analogy.

Answer 10

The OP's expression in a comment about "killing kilometers" suggested "burning up the miles" to me.

For the game play I suggest

I was burnt

The mainstream dictionaries want to involve fire in their definitions, but Green's Dictionary of Slang has

burnt
4. destroyed, defeated.

which seems to suit the colloquialisms tag.

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Also

I was thrashed

Cambridge

to defeat someone very easily in a game or sports competition

Answer 11

Another altnernative that works in a similar way to "creamed" is "pasted". I've heard that used in the past in such a context.

"Thrashed" also springs to mind.

While your explanation of "milled" makes sense, I do think it'd require such an explanation to avoid confusion.