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A zombie is approaching you, but all is well since you happen to have a live grenade in your hands. Is there at all a one-word term for the act of throwing that grenade at the zombie and successfully blowing it up? More generally, is there an explicit one-word term for actively blowing something up (not necessarily with a grenade), preferably one with some sort of corresponding noun?

Consider firearms... a good example, if in bad taste:

I will shoot you, zombie.

I shot the zombie.

I fired two shots at the zombie.

In my case:

I will ???? you, zombie.
(candidates: "explode" - sounds awkward; "will blow you up" -works, but I really need a one-word phrase for elegance)

I ???? the zombie.

I fired two grenades at the zombie.

I am designing a small game where I am already using one-word terms like "snipes", "kills", etc. It would be nice to have some one word expression for blowing things up that I can easily use with quantifiers. "Explosions" isn't a bad choice, but I feel like I can do better - it seems odd to say "I scored 4 more explosions than you did," and it also seems a bit ambiguous (could just as easily mean a place or object just as easily as personnel or zombies, whereas 'snipes' and 'kills' are not ambiguous).

Yes, the game does involve zombies.

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  • Too Localised for me. The standard English expression is blow [someone/something up, and unless OP's game takes the world by storm, no-one except him will ever "really need a one-word phrase for elegance" .
    – FumbleFingers
    Jul 28, 2012 at 2:09
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    Maybe just invent your own usage: "I will grenade you, zombie!" "I scored four more grenadings than you did."
    – GEdgar
    Jul 28, 2012 at 12:55
  • @GEdgar Hey if coinings are allowed, then “I’m gonna splode you!” works. :)
    – tchrist ♦
    Jul 28, 2012 at 23:45

6 Answers 6

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A word does come to mind that describes the act, but it's not strictly an English term, it is Military Slang and now often used in the gaming circles, with slight change in meaning.

Frag, Fragged will be the words corresponding to shoot and shot.

Google: "define frag"

verb /frag/ fragged, past participle; fragged, past tense; fragging, present participle; frags, 3rd person singular present

Deliberately kill (an unpopular senior officer), typically with a hand grenade
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  • I'm liking 'frag.' This I think is essentially what I was looking for, though the other answers are quite good.
    – benjammin
    Jul 28, 2012 at 1:13
  • Note your quote: it's not gaming, it's military slang slipping into the mainstream. And, yeah, it's English.
    – jmoreno
    Jul 28, 2012 at 6:38
  • @jmoreno Yes I realised that later when I looked at the precise dictionary meanings, I'll make appropriate changes. I said gaming off the top of my head because that's where I heard it initially.
    – ffledgling
    Jul 28, 2012 at 9:49
  • In gaming circles I am familiar with, I've fragged him usually means simply I've killed him without discerning whether the kill was made with grenade or a handgun. Therefore, I would say that the phrase can be confusing for gamers.
    – Nikola Anusev
    Jul 28, 2012 at 20:11
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    @NikolaAnusev: The term frag is the shortened form of "fragmentation grenade"; the word was originally a noun ("Two frags left!"), but got verbed as well when it was used to describe the action of rolling a "frag" under an unpopular officer's bunk in Vietnam. If you blow someone up with a frag, that person has been fragged. In gaming parlance the meaning may be stretched, but it should be understood as metaphorical, not literal, the same way "nuked" or "cremated" would be.
    – Robusto
    Jul 30, 2012 at 20:37
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Smite ("To strike down or kill with godly force"; "To injure with divine power") might work, and it has the great past tense, smote. Thus: "I will smite you, zombie!" and "I smote the zombie!"

Also nuke (verb sense 3, "To completely destroy") and slag, which I've heard in sense of destroying something, although the wiktionary definition is "To talk badly about someone; to denigrate someone". Also, tchrist's blast suggestion is good; see sense 2, "To shatter, as if by an explosion".

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The closest one-word answer I can come up with is detonate. That certainly blows things up. However, people are unlikely to themselves be explosive devices.

Perhaps you might try blast.

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Based on your context, I like splat:

a sound made by splattering or slapping.

I like it even more in light of the definition of splatter:

to splash and scatter upon impact: The paint splattered when I dropped the bucket.

I think if you blew up a zombie, it would splatter.

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If we're talking about wasting zombies you've got to go with obliterate!

  • : to remove utterly from recognition or memory
  • : to remove from existence : destroy utterly all trace, indication, or significance of

"I will obliterate you, zombie!"

"I totally obliterated that zombie scum!

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I would use either "fragmentize" or "fragmentate". "Frag" is also an abbreviated way of saying either of those words.

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