IdiomDaily Life
English
Englishdressed to kill
Meaning: Dressed to make a strong impression, usually in fancy or stylish clothes.
Example: “She showed up to the party dressed to kill.”
Origin: A 19th-century American hyperbole using "kill" in its older figurative sense of doing something to a striking, impressive degree, rather than anything violent. The phrase appears in print by around 1849, in E. G. Paige's Dow's Patent Sermons, and the imagery is straightforward: an outfit so eye-catching it could figuratively "kill" onlookers with its impact, in the same spirit as being "dressed to the nines" or looking good enough to "die for."
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