slay
v.to do something exceptionally well or look very impressive. You use this when someone succeeds at something or has a great outfit.
v.to perform exceptionally well or to look impressively stylish. In modern usage, it is often used intransitively to express admiration for someone's success or appearance.
“You absolutely slay in that dress!”
“She worked hard on her presentation and completely managed to slay the audience with her confidence.”
In its slang sense, it is frequently used as an exclamation or an intransitive verb to denote excellence.
The irregular past tense 'slew' is used for the literal meaning of killing, while the regular 'slayed' is standard for the modern slang meaning of succeeding.
From Middle English slayn, from Old English slēan (“to hit, punch, strike; to kill”), from Proto-West Germanic slahan, from Proto-Germanic slahaną (“to hit, strike; to kill”), from Proto-Indo-European *slak- (“to hit, strike, throw”). Cognates Cognate with Alemannic German schlaa (“to beat, hit”), Central Franconian schlage, schlon, schloon (“to beat, hit, strike”), Dutch and Low German slaan (“to beat, hit, strike”), German schlagen, schlahen, schlahn (“to beat, hit, strike”), Luxembourgish schloen (“to beat, defeat, hit”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish slå (“to beat, hit, strike”), Faroese sláa (“to beat, strike”), Icelandic slá (“to hit, strike”), Gothic 𐍃𐌻𐌰𐌷𐌰𐌽 (slahan, “to hit, smite, strike”). Related to slaughter, onslaught.
See sley
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.