dress to kill

To dress in extravagantly fancy or stylish clothes so as to thoroughly impress others. Mary always dresses to kill, so she turns heads wherever she goes. The chairman of the board will be there tonight, so be sure you dress to kill! Come on, this is an important job interview, so you've got to dress to kill! Torn jeans and a tee shirt are not gonna cut it!

See also: dress, kill, to

dressed to kill

Very well dressed and fashionable, typically in an attempt to impress other people. I have to be dressed to kill at this event tonight—a lot of important people will be there. The chairman of the board will be there tonight, so everyone needs to be dressed to kill! Torn jeans and a tee shirt are not gonna cut it at a job interview this important—you have to be dressed to kill.

See also: dress, kill, to

dressed to kill

and dressed (up) fit to kill

Fig. dressed in fancy or stylish clothes. (See also dressed (up) fit to kill.) Wow, look at Sally! She's really dressed to kill. A person doesn't go on vacation dressed to kill. When Joe came to pick Mary up for the movie, he was dressed up fit to kill and carrying a dozen roses.

See also: dress, kill, to

dressed to kill

Also, dressed to the nines. Elaborately attired, as in For the opening of the restaurant she was dressed to kill, or At the opera everyone was dressed to the nines. The first of these hyperbolic expressions dates from the early 1800s and uses kill in the sense of "to a great or impressive degree." The phrase to the nines in the sense of "superlative" dates from the late 1700s and its original meaning has been lost, but the most likely theory is that it alludes to the fact that nine, the highest single-digit numeral, stands for "best." Also see gussied up.

See also: dress, kill, to

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

dressed to kill

If someone, especially a woman, is dressed to kill, they are wearing very smart or attractive clothes which are intended to attract attention and impress people. She watched his plane come into Mascot airport, dressed to kill, her hand shielding her eyes.

See also: dress, kill, to

Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2012

dressed to kill

wearing attractive and flamboyant clothes in order to make a striking impression.

See also: dress, kill, to

dressed to ˈkill

(informal) (especially of a woman) wearing your best clothes, especially clothes that attract attention: She went to the party dressed to kill.

See also: dress, kill, to

dressed to kill

mod. dressed in fancy or stylish clothes to impress someone. I’m never dressed to kill. I just try to be neat.

See also: dress, kill, to

dressed to kill/to the nines

Very fashionably attired. The first expression is a nineteenth-century Americanism. It appears in print in E. G. Paige’s Dow’s Patent Sermons, ca. 1849 (“A gentleman tiptoeing along Broadway, with a lady wiggle-waggling by his side, and both dressed to kill”). The precise analogy is no longer known. “Kill” may allude to the idea of making a conquest, or perhaps it is an extension of something “done to death”—that is, overdone. Dressed to the nines, also put as dressed up to the nines, is British in origin and literally means elaborately dressed to perfection. The “nines” were singled out to signify “superlative” in numerous other contexts from the late eighteenth century on, but no one is quite sure why. Some say it is because nine, as the highest single-digit number, symbolizes the best. Today, however, it is the numeral ten that signifies the best (as, for example, in Olympics judging). Other writers suggest that nines is a corruption of “to then eyne”—that is, to the eyes—but this interpretation doesn’t make much sense either. Describing an old department store holding its final sale before closing and lavishly decorated for Christmas, Mary Cantwell observed that “the corpse was dressed to the nines” (New York Times, Dec. 1989).