In Return of the Jedi, Luke says to Vader:
That was why you couldn't destroy me. That's why you won't take me to your emperor now.
Later, the Emperor says to Luke:
If you will not be turned, you will be destroyed.
And in The Phantom Menace, Mace Windu says with regard to the apparent death of Darth Maul:
But which was destroyed? The master, or the apprentice?
Perhaps most famously (as @Adamant reminded me), Vader in The Empire Strikes Back:
There is no escape. Don't make me destroy you.
And later in the same fight:
Luke, you can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this!
That's enough to establish a pattern. Why do these characters consistently say "destroy" instead of "kill"? It is just a peculiar force-user mannerism/tradition, or is there some underlying spiritual significance to their choice of words? Am I correct in my presumption that this pattern is exclusive or nearly exclusive to force-users?
Note that there are several places in the scripts where the word "destroy" is used where "kill" would not be a suitable replacement, for example when discussing the destruction of a planet, a ship, or a droid (it's not obvious whether droids are alive to begin with). Those usages of the word "destroy" are not relevant to the question.
I am also aware that there are occurrences of force-users not using the word destroy, such as when Obi-Wan tells Luke that Vader "betrayed and murdered [his] father." That doesn't invalidate the question unless someone can prove that the usages of "destroy" noted above are not statistically significant.
Edit: if there's a simple out-of-universe explanation such as censorship, that's a valid answer as long as it can be backed up by specific evidence. However, I am skeptical of this due to several uncensored usages of the word "kill" in those same movies:
Episode IV:
Vader:
Send a distress signal, and then inform the senate that all aboard were killed!
Obi-Wan:
You'd have been killed, too, and the droids would be in the hands of the Empire.
Luke:
But they're going to kill her!
Episode V:
Lando:
If you put him in there, it might kill him.
Luke:
He told me enough! He told me you killed him!
Episode VI:
I can't kill my own father.
I will not turn... and you'll be forced to kill me.
And perhaps most perplexing/telling of all:
You couldn't bring yourself to kill me before, and I don't believe you'll destroy me now.
It seems as if characters are more likely to use "destroy" instead of "kill" when the person being destroyed and/or killed is a force user. But even if that's correct, it doesn't explain why they use this language.
