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execution |
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execution
1. the carrying out or undergoing of a sentence of death 2. a. the enforcement of the judgment of a court of law b. the writ ordering such enforcement Execution Exile (See BANISHMENT.) Budd, Billy court-martialed and hanged for accidently killing a ship’s officer. [Am. Lit.: Herman Melville Billy Budd] final favor granted one about to die. [Pop. Cult.: Misc.] hanged by his regiment for shooting a comrade. [Br. Lit.: Kipling Danny Deever in Benét, 549] famous hangman; eponym of modern hoisting apparatus. [Br. Hist.: Espy, 170] dispatches priests of Nob under Saul’s order. [O.T.: I Samuel 22:18–19] her hanging is triumphantly watched from a tower by Frollo, who is thereupon thrown from it by Quasimodo. [Fr. Lit.: Victor Hugo The Hunchback of Notre Dame]
invented during French Revolution as a humane method of capital punishment. [Fr. Hist.: Benét, 429] characteristic knot for death by hanging. [Pop. Cult.: Misc.] appointed by the Mikado as Lord High Executioner. [Br. Opera: The Mikado] nickname for ordinary hangman at Tyburn gallows. [Br. Hist.: Brewer Dictionary, 1110] swaggering highwayman sentenced to execution but reprieved at the last moment. [Br. Lit.: The Beggar’s Opera in Magill I, 59; The Threepenny Opera in Benét, 90] executed in 1867; subject of painting by Manet. [Mex. Hist.: NCE, 1728; Fr. Art: EB, 11:440] reformer priest, hanged and burned at the stake as a heretic. [Ital. Hist.: Benét, 900] describes the fears and actions of five men and two women before their deaths on the scaffold. [Russ. Lit.: Magill II, 957] attempts to kill his employer’s wife, (his mistress), is condemned to the guillotine. [Fr. Lit.: Stendhal The Red and the Black in Magill I, 808] Goya painting of Napoleon’s soldiers firing on Spanish rebels. [Sp. Art: EB, 8:260] site of gallows where criminals were publicly hanged. [Br. Hist.: Brewer Dictionary, 920]
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