Killing

Roles: killer, victim, weapon, act, aftermath

The deliberate ending of life — slaughter, butchery, hunting, execution. As a source domain, killing vocabulary transfers into commerce (make a killing), comedy (killed it), competition (crushed them), and criticism (savage review, eviscerating takedown). The visceral violence of the frame lends intensity to domains where the actual stakes are financial or reputational rather than mortal. The slaughterhouse and abattoir provide a particularly rich sub-frame for industrial-scale destruction applied metaphorically to market competition.

As Source Frame (1)