gibbet
English
[edit]
Etymology
[edit]From Middle English gibet, from Old French gibet (French gibet), either from Frankish *gibb (“forked stick”) or from Latin gibbus (“hunchbacked”).[1]
Pronunciation
[edit]- IPA(key): /ˈd͡ʒɪbɪt/
Audio (Southern England): (file) - Rhymes: -ɪbɪt
Noun
[edit]gibbet (plural gibbets)
- An upright post with a crosspiece used for execution and subsequent public display.
- 1702, [Daniel Defoe], “Part I”, in Reformation of Manners, a Satyr, [London]: [s.n.], →OCLC, page 22:
- Thy Friends without the help of Prophecie, / Read Goals[sic – meaning Gaols] and Gibbets in thy Deſtiny; […]
- 1728, Thomas Otway, “The Atheist, or, the Second Part of the Soldier’s Fortune”, in The Works of Mr. Thomas Otway, volume II, London, page 37:
- No, had every Commandment but a Gibbet belonging to it, I ſhould not have had four King's Evidences to-day ſwear impudently I was a Papiſt, when I was never at Maſs yet ſince I was born, nor indeed at any other Worſhip theſe twenty Years.
- 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter I, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, pages 241-242:
- Why, your cavalier is a rebel—an exile, whose property is confiscated, and for whose neck the gibbet stands prepared!
- 2003, Martin McDonagh, “Act One, Scene One”, in The Pillowman, →ISBN, pages 17-18:
- TUPOLSKI: A man wakes up in the iron gibbet he's been left to starve to death in. He knows he was guilty of the crime they put him in there for, but he cannot remember what the crime was.
- The projecting arm of a crane, from which the load is suspended.
- Synonym: jib
- A human-shaped structure made of iron bands designed to publicly display the corpse of an executed criminal.
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]upright post with a crosspiece used for execution and subsequent public display; a gallows
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Verb
[edit]gibbet (third-person singular simple present gibbets, present participle gibbeting or gibbetting, simple past and past participle gibbeted or gibbetted)
- (transitive) To execute (someone), or display (a body), on a gibbet.
- 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume I, London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC:
- The same animal which hath the honour to have some part of his flesh eaten at the table of a duke, may perhaps be degraded in another part, and some of his limbs gibbeted, as it were, in the vilest stall in town. Where, then, lies the difference between the food of the nobleman and the porter, if both are at dinner on the same ox or calf, but in the seasoning, the dressing, the garnishing, and the setting forth?
- (transitive) To expose (someone) to ridicule or scorn.
Translations
[edit]to execute (someone), or display (a body), on a gibbet
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to expose (someone) to ridicule or scorn
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See also
[edit]- flibberty-gibbet (probably etymologically unrelated)
References
[edit]- ^ Le Robert pour tous, Dictionnaire de la langue française, Janvier 2004, p. 520
Middle English
[edit]Noun
[edit]gibbet
- alternative form of gibet
Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms derived from Frankish
- English terms derived from Latin
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/ɪbɪt
- Rhymes:English/ɪbɪt/2 syllables
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- en:Capital punishment
- English terms with quotations
- English verbs
- English transitive verbs
- Middle English variant lemmas
