Overkill is the use of excessive force or action that goes further than what is necessary to achieve its goal. It may be a literal term referring to physical damage, though it is also used in colloquial conversation as a

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wit ...

. An example is killing an ant with a

sledgehammer A sledgehammer is a tool with a large, flat, often metal head, attached to a long handle. The long handle combined with a heavy head allows the sledgehammer to gather momentum during a swing and apply a large force compared to hammers designed t ...

Nuclear weapons

''Overkill'' is especially used to refer to a destructive nuclear capacity exceeding the amount needed to destroy an enemy.http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/overkill>. The term is attested from 1946"overkill." Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. 31 March. 2009. . and was in common use during the Cold War era, referring to the arms race between the United States and the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

. Both nations possess more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy one another many times over – nuclear overkill. The term for this was "pounding the rubble" or, as military officers sometimes joked, "pounding the

ruble The ruble (American English) or rouble (Commonwealth English) (; rus, рубль, p=rublʲ) is the currency unit of Belarus and Russia. Historically, it was the currency of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union. , currencies named ''rub ...

In video games

Overkill is a common feature implemented in many

video games Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedb ...

, typically representing the fact that the damage a single attack inflicted on an enemy or player character far exceeded the character's remaining health points. In many

first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...

s, starting with '' Doom'', overkilling a character results in "

gibbing Gibbing is the process of preparing salt herring (or soused herring), in which the gills and part of the gullet are removed from the fish, eliminating any bitter taste. The liver and pancreas are left in the fish during the salt-curing process ...

" – the character exploding in a shower of gore.

Notes

Slang Violence 1940s neologisms English words {{English-lang-stub