Nonkilling

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Lack of killing; permitting to live. uncountable, usually

    "[…] respect of harmlessness to living beings and nonkilling of living beings."

  2. 2
    An action or occurrence other than a direct killing (but possibly having a similar effect). countable, usually

    "[…] then its death is a moral wrong even if the result of "nonkillings" will be a marked decrease in the population of that part of the animal kingdom."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Not engaging in killing. not-comparable

    "Hunger does not normally induce frog killing in a nonkilling laboratory rat. However, if that rat has had the experience of watching a rat kill frogs, ...."

Synonyms

All synonyms
pacifism

Example

More examples

"Hunger does not normally induce frog killing in a nonkilling laboratory rat. However, if that rat has had the experience of watching a rat kill frogs, ...."

Etymology

From non- + killing.

More for "nonkilling"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.