[General] 'He must be killing it'

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Olympian

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Hello,

what is the meaning of 'He must be killing it' in the following context? This is from an article called The Mystery Monk Making Billions With 5-Hour Energy in Forbes magazine.

LaSorda says he has found himself having to explain who his mysterious partner is on more than one occasion. “The reaction I get is ‘Who’s this guy?’” LaSorda says. “Then I say, ‘The 5-Hour Energy guy,’ and they say, ‘Oh, sh–, he must be killing it.’ I say, ‘Yeah, he is.’”

In short, the context here is that the mysterious partner, Bhargava, has made his billion by selling the energy drink 5-Hour Energy and is now investing in fuel efficient engines and hydroponics. What do they mean by 'he must be killing it'? Do they mean he is killing the 5-Hour Energy product/business by getting into this business of fuel efficient engines?

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5jj

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We need more context to know for sure.
 

JMurray

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As 5jj says, more context would be helpful, but here's my first reaction.

If I overheard this conversation:
a) John's gone into the used car business.
b) Wow! How's he doing?
a) He's absolutely killing it.
… I would understand this to mean that John is very successful and making a lot of money. Similar to "making a killing".

Here are some examples from the American Corpus where "killing it" means being very successful.

– Magnarella's latest act, Ryan Bingham, is killing it even though the crowd really came to see the headliner, Drive-By Truckers.
– Supermodel in the making Karlie Kloss pops by to congratulate Jablonski, who has been "killing it" this season.
–"Anthony (a pizza entrepreneur) is killing it here," says Stoll, who has traveled to Naples with Strong twice. 'He's intuitive and gets the technique and ingredients".

not a teacher
 

Olympian

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As 5jj says, more context would be helpful, but here's my first reaction.

If I overheard this conversation:
a) John's gone into the used car business.
b) Wow! How's he doing?
a) He's absolutely killing it.
… I would understand this to mean that John is very successful and making a lot of money. Similar to "making a killing".

Here are some examples from the American Corpus where "killing it" means being very successful.

– Magnarella's latest act, Ryan Bingham, is killing it even though the crowd really came to see the headliner, Drive-By Truckers.
– Supermodel in the making Karlie Kloss pops by to congratulate Jablonski, who has been "killing it" this season.
–"Anthony (a pizza entrepreneur) is killing it here," says Stoll, who has traveled to Naples with Strong twice. 'He's intuitive and gets the technique and ingredients".

not a teacher

@JMurray, thank you :) :up:
In this case, this person (Bhargava) is extremely successful in selling the drink and has become a billionaire. So, it makes sense now. Thank you.

English is difficult because of all these expressions. I know one expression which is similar but totally different in meaning - 'Stop it! You are killing me!' - said by someone when someone else is being very funny. Here 'killing me' is presumably killing by (excessive) laughter. :lol:
 
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