Definition of "killing-time" [killing-time]

• The season when hogs are slaughtered. (noun)

The Century Dictionary (Public Domain)

• "He endeavoured to make them aware also, that hasty wedlock had been the bane of many a savoury professor — that the unbelieving wife had too often reversed the text and perverted the believing husband — that when the famous Donald Cargill, being then hiding in Lee – Wood, in Lanarkshire, it being killing-time, did, upon importunity, marry Robert Marshal of Starry"
• "The period of this tale is in the heat of the killing-time; the scene laid for the most part in solitary hills and morasses, haunted only by the so-called Mountain"
• "In killing-time they put down hecatombs of beef in snow and of ham and sausage in hot lard, and they have stores of cod-fish to be cooked with cream, and of chickens for potpies, which are never made properly, for some mysterious reason, save by a farmer's wife."