SCP Foundation

One of the favorite words of The Foundation, it seems, is "terminate" and conjugations thereof. It seems that the word is frequently meant as another way of saying "kill" as in "Monthly termination of D-Class Personnel" (though most of us don't regard that as cannon now) or "Agent Bishop chose to self-terminate." But I've seen termination used in other contexts which suggest that it has other meaning, such as the more traditional definition of simply firing someone (though there are cases where the foundation terminates it's own personnel)/

Is terminate generally regarded to always mean kill? Does it strike people as off when used in some other way by The Foundation?

I personally think the Foundation uses "terminate" in an intentionally ambiguous way. It's sort of another layer of redaction: "They are no longer an active foundation asset. How that was accomplished in this particular case is not important to this document."

All context, for better or worse.

Yeah, the definition of "Terminate" depends on the context. Usually, it depends on who is getting terminated. If a D-class is terminated, they are likely killed. If a scientist is terminated, they are probably fired.