snuff n.1
1. a murder.
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Family 51: The family was neat, orderly and extremely clean [...] during those early days prior to snuff. | |
| Silent Terror 151: ‘[We] blow the old fart to kingdom come [...] Needless to say, we didn't get made for the snuff’. | |
| (con. early 1950s) L.A. Confidential 54: He’s made for at least a dozen snuffs for Mickey C. | |
| (con. 1964–8) Cold Six Thousand 218: The snuffs fucked Holly up. The snuffs fucked Holly up with Wayne Senior. |
2. attrib. use of sense 1.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Picture Palace 306: The seconds-before death pictures of executions and ambushes and train wrecks: snuff shots, as they were called. | |
| In La-La Land We Trust (1999) 144: ‘Where’d you get those pictures?’ ‘They’re off the snuff reel.’. | |
| After The Ball 46: Necrophilia, bestiality, pedophilia, feces fetishism, and snuff sex. | |
| Guardian Guide 17–23 July 2: The seedy world of snuff cinema. | |
| Observer Mag. 12 Sept. 11: Footage of Robert Kennedy’s gunning-down in 1968, my first exposure to the jangling horror of snuff news. | |
| Observer Screen 20 Feb. 9: It was moving and sensitive but would they have got away with TV’s first snuff programme were it not for the ‘educational’ smokescreen. | |
| Hilliker Curse 18: Mike Hammer was a chick magnet and a Commie-snuff artiste. | |
| Hard Bounce [ebook] ‘We just yanked that kid away from a kiddie porn — no, a snuff porn — freak’. |
In compounds
(orig. US) a film, usu. pornographic, that climaxes in the actual death of one of the participants, usu. an actress or, if paedophiliac, a child; also in attrib. use.
| Glitter Dome (1982) 294: They were going to kill her. On camera. A genuine snuff film. | |
| In La-La Land We Trust (1999) 14: S and M, Walter. Kiddie porn. Snuff films. [Ibid.] 129: You like snuff? I got Rosita Dies for It. | |
| Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In 44: Visiting Hours [is] full of what Rhett Beavers says are psychological subtleties. In other words, killer-creep snuff movie. | |
| Hard Candy (1990) 11: His snuff-film business was as dead as the little girls he made into movie stars. | |
| Homeboy 274: He made em star in their very own snuff movies. [...] Snuffers shipped to every sick corner of the earth by his company. | |
| Tuff 60: A snuff film where masked niggers go around ambushing police officers, field-testing these bulletproof vests. | |
![[SA]](/static/img/flags/sa.png "South Africa") | Like Clockwork 193: Don’t start that shit about snuff movies, Clare. They’re all staged. Nobody dies in them. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Thrill City [ebook] Watto was over by the laptop, fiddling with a webcam [...] Was he doing a snuff movie? |
In phrases
to murder, to assassinate.
| (con. 1960s) Blood Brothers 18: I began receiving threatening letters against my life. In plain old English, somebody wanted to put the snuff on me. |