Korean Job Discussion Forums

[YTMND]

I have some students who are convinced that killing time is bad because it has "killing". They are using it interchangeably with "wasting time".

Are there other terms we use "killing" with that don't mean it is bad?

[Zackback]

Killing me softly with his song.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Me_Softly_with_His_Song

[schwa]

dressed to kill
his jokes kill me
kill a bottle of booze

[lesigh]

Killing time and wasting time are similar but there's a subtle nuance, at least to my ear.

Killing time = you have extra time that's not valuable, waiting until the more important thing comes along

wasting time = you should be doing something else with your time but you're choosing to procrastinate instead of fulfilling whatever prior obligations you had


I do think that most expressions with "kill" do tend to have negative connotations:
-if looks could kill
-dressed to kill
-in for the kill
-to kill for something
-something being killer (difficult)
-you're killing me (making my life difficult/absurd)
-

[nora]

If you look at the etymology of those phrases, they all come back to the idea of killing something, so they are all negative in that regard. I think that lesigh is right - killing time is for time that you have that isn't allocated, but wasting time is for time you should be doing something else.

[22tea77]

He made a killing in the stock market.

[CGriswald309B]

[northway]

Put it in the Korean context: given working hours, who has any time to kill?