Unfortunately the signals are badly named. Last time I explained to someone the difference between SIGTERM and SIGKILL. He was baffled.

He: You mean SIGKILL isn't the signal for graceful termination? And it isn't sent by default when invoking `kill <PID>`?

Me: Nope. Why do you think that?

He: Well, the command is called `kill`.

Me: ...good point.