garrote

plural garrotes · alternative UK garotte · alternative UK garrotte

1. historicalAn iron collar formerly used in Spain to execute people by strangulation.

   The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and leadballs do their work, / The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,

   1892, Walt Whitman, “To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire”, in Leaves of Grass […], Philadelphia, Pa.: David McKay, publisher, […], →OCLC, page 287

   3 more examples

   I have twenty times done that which by Busnée law should have brought me to the filimicha (gallows), yet my neck has never yet been squeezed by the cold garrote.

   1843, George Borrow, The Bible in Spain, London: Cassell and Company, Ltd.

   […] promising that, by so doing, the painful death to which he had been sentenced should be commuted for the milder form of the garrote,—a mode of punishment by strangulation, used for criminals in Spain.

   1847, William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru

   The Spanish had responded to the insurgency with characteristic brutality. They gave rebels the "usual four shots in the back" or the garrote—an iron collar tightened around the victim's neck with a screw until he was strangled to death.

   2004, Chris Wallace, Character: Profiles in Presidential Courage, →ISBN

2. Something, especially a cord or wire, used for strangulation.

   The mob boss was known for having his enemies executed with a garrote of piano wire.

present singular third person garrotes · participle present garroting · participle past garroted · past garroted · alternative UK garotte · alternative UK garrotte

1. transitiveTo execute by strangulation, to kill using a garrote.

   I have not a sou, and for want of a few crowns I shall be garroted within a month unless I can escape, though, as I told you before, I have done nothing, a mere bagatelle; but the worst crimes in Spain are poverty and misery.

   1843, George Borrow, The Bible in Spain, London: Cassell and Company, Ltd.

2. transitiveTo suddenly render insensible by semi-strangulation, and then to rob.

   About this time the police reports were full of cases of garrotting. The victim was seized from behind, one man gagged or burked him, while another picked his pocket.

   1905, Henry J. Coke, Tracks of a Rolling Stone

   1 more example

   “And then Lee may have fallen into the river, and Norton been garrotted. It is certainly a formidable indictment that you have against Bellingham; but if you were to place it before a police magistrate, he would simply laugh in your face.”

   1894, Arthur Conan Doyle, “Lot No. 249”, in Round the Red Lamp […]