execution
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Related to execution: Execution by firing squad, Execution by hanging
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, Billycourt-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]