out-Herod

present singular third person out-Herods · participle present out-Heroding · participle past out-Heroded · past out-Heroded · alternative outherod

1. To surpass in evil and cruelty.First known use 17th c.

   I could haue ſuch a Fellow whipt for o're-doing Termagant: it out-Herod's Herod. Pray you auoid it.

   c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i], page 266

   3 more examples

   nor is his tone anything like so venomous as Carlyle's in that unpleasing essay on Cagliostro, in which he threw all decency to the winds and out-Heroded the Inquisition whilst ranting against it.

   1948, E. M. Butler, The Myth of the Magus

   The farther and the longer away from his native country, the more he out-Heroded Artemus Ward and Petroleum V. Nasby.

   1989 November 9, Harry Levin, “Putting Pound Together”, in New York Review of Books

   Knowing that it is easier to convert the children than their elders, the Government of Nicholas I, out-Heroding Herod, inaugurated a system so cruel as to fill with terror and pity the heart of the most ferocious barbarian.

   2005 May 27, Jacob S. Raisin, The Haskalah Movement in Russia, page 138