stop someone's clock

present singular third person stops someone's clock · participle present stopping someone's clock · participle past stopped someone's clock · past stopped someone's clock

1. slangTo kill someone.

   I cannot let it stop my clock, I'm far from the end of my road.

   2016, Smiley Bonds, The People’s Hope

   2 more examples

   "You wouldn't last thirty minutes if I wasn't behind you," Dandy Bob snapped. "Somebody would stop your clock, only they're afraid of me."

   2004, Bennett Foster, Gila City, page 147

   Navarro aimed his cocked Colt at Homer Winters's fear-etched face. “Come and pick him up before I stop his clock.”

   2005, Ralph Compton, Bullet Creek

   Synonyms: annihilate, bag, baptize, bereave of life, blight, bring down, bump off, bury

2. slangTo clean someone's clock; to make incapable of action; to thwart.

   Those words, from her mouth, stopped my clock.

   2022, Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

   3 more examples

   Mom wasn't in no mood for lallygagging and she give him a look that stopped his clock.

   1936, Vincent McHugh, Caleb Catlum's America, page 23

   Somebody who played a grim little war-game with him; not wanting to kill him, only to kill time, to stop his clock for a couple of hours.

   1981, James Barnett, The Firing Squad, page 206

   “He wasn't going to change his tune,” Tucker said. “So I stopped his clock. Now he knows not to bugger us about.”

   2011, Derek Robinson, Hullo Russia, Goodbye England

3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see stop, clock.

   Yet when Garry Kasparov failed to stop his clock after making a move in a World Championship match, it was his opponent, Anatoly Karpov, who was criticized for failing to alert him.

   2015, Andy Soltis, Chess Lists, page 11