noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
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"For two-and-twenty years he [Joseph-Ignace Guillotin], unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive [Julius] Cæsar’s."
"The right hon. Gentleman is making a great stooshie about time in relation to this Bill, but was it not the case that, when the SNP [Scottish National Party] Scottish Government introduced their continuity Bill in the Scottish Parliament, they operated a ruthless guillotine to prevent proper scrutiny of it? That is the case; they ran a guillotine on that Bill, and there was a very limited amount of time allowed for debate and scrutiny, yet he complains about that happening here."
"Many counterrevolutionaries were guillotined during the French Revolution."
"Charles I of England was executed by guillotine."
A machine used for the application of capital punishment by decapitation, consisting of a tall upright frame from which is suspended a heavy diagonal-edged blade which is dropped onto the neck of the person to be executed; also, execution using this machine.
Common synonyms include: ax, behead, behead, beheading, beheading, beheading instrument.
Charles I of England was executed by guillotine.
Pronounced /ˈɡɪlətiːn/.
Borrowed from French guillotine, named after the French physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738–1814), who proposed its use for capital punishment.
Borrowed from French guillotiner (“to execute with a guillotine, to guillotine”), from guillotine (see etymology 1) + -er (suffix forming infinitives of first-conjugation verbs).