guillotine
pronunciation
How to pronounce guillotine in British English:
UK [ˈgɪləti:n]
How to pronounce guillotine in American English:
US [ˈɡɪləˌtin, ˈɡiə-]
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- Noun:
- closure imposed on the debate of specific sections of a bill
- instrument of execution that consists of a weighted blade between two vertical poles; used for beheading people
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- Verb:
- kill by cutting the head off with a guillotine
Word Origin
- guillotine
- guillotine: [18] Joseph Ignace Guillotin (1738– 1814), a French doctor, did not invent the device named after him – such contraptions had been around for some time – but it was he who saw the advantages, in terms of speed and efficiency, of an easily resettable blade for beheading in a time of peak demand, and he recommended it to the Revolutionary authorities. The term used for it, first recorded in English in 1793, is a fitting memorial to him. Its application to the limitation of discussion in a legislature dates from the 1890s.
- guillotine (n.)
- "The name of the machine in which the axe descends in grooves from a considerable height so that the stroke is certain and the head instantly severed from the body." ["Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure," January 1793], 1791, from French guillotine, named in recognition of French physician Joseph Guillotin (1738-1814), who as deputy to the National Assembly (1789) proposed, for humanitarian and efficiency reasons, that capital punishment be carried out by beheading quickly and cleanly on a machine, which was built in 1791 and first used the next year. Similar devices were used in the Middle Ages. The verb is first attested 1794. Related: Guillotined; guillotining.
Example
- 1. The queen was executed by guillotine in 1793 after the french revolution abolished the monarchy .
- 2. But this was increasingly a lost argument once their royal heads started rolling into guillotine baskets .
- 3. See place de la concorde , where the guillotine once stood .
- 4. That she would lose her head on the guillotine for it , however , seems not only a bit excessive but most likely undeserved .
- 5. Few now would accept that the conquest of roman territory by foreign invaders was a guillotine brought down on the neck of classical civilisation .