gibbet
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
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gibbets,
present (3rd person singular)
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gibbeted,
past participle, past
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gibbeting
present participle
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to hang on a gibbet.
-
to put to death by hanging on a gibbet.
-
to hold up to public scorn.
noun
verb
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to put to death by hanging on a gibbet
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to hang (a corpse) on a gibbet
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to expose to public ridicule
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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gibbetsimple
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gibbetssimple
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have gibbetedperfect
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has gibbetedperfect
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am gibbetingprogressive
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are gibbetingprogressive
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is gibbetingprogressive
-
have been gibbetingperfect progressive
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has been gibbetingperfect progressive
Past
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gibbetedsimple
-
had gibbetedperfect
-
was gibbetingprogressive
-
were gibbetingprogressive
-
had been gibbetingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of gibbet
1175–1225; Middle English < Old French gibet (earlier, staff or cudgel), diminutive of gibe staff, club
Explanation
A gibbet is a structure that's used to execute criminals by hanging them. The execution of someone on a gibbet is an old-fashioned practice. You can use the word gibbet to mean "gallows," or "public execution structure," and it can also be a verb, meaning to hang a person on one. Back in the days when executioners would routinely gibbet criminals in the public square, the bodies were often left on display — possibly to intimidate other potential criminals. The word gibbet has its root in the Old French gibet, "bent stick or gallows," from gibe, or "club."
Vocabulary lists containing gibbet
The Crucible
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"A Modest Proposal," Vocabulary from the satire
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"A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Generations of school children across Halifax are taught the history of its gibbet but a few years ago it fell over due to rot.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2014
"It fell down, I was nearby and I felt it was important," said Mr Haddock, whose offices sit opposite the gibbet site.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2014
He trotted up to the gibbet, stopped, worked his mule under the goose, and grabbed.
From Time Magazine Archive
But, without the dire consequences predicted by Ellenborough, gibbet and gallows were prescribed for fewer & fewer crimes.
From Time Magazine Archive
He took the road for Cambridge, crossing desolate Charlestown Common with its salt marshes, clay pits, gallows, and gibbet.
From "Johnny Tremain" by Esther Hoskins Forbes
Although the practice is fading, mole-catchers employ such gibbets to prove that the promised work is completed, and farmers use them to niggle their neighbours into clearing their own fields.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 8, 2017
In Victorian times, the heyday of butterfly collecting, gamekeepers would attract Purple Emperors down to their gibbets by hanging out rotting carcasses of crows and rabbits.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2015
The blasts have stripped many shop signs off their brackets, and the gibbets hang forsaken.
From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
Whereupon Roberti, a Flemish Jesuit, falls upon him tooth and nail, disputes his facts, overwhelms him with abuse, and gibbets him for popular ridicule.
From Curious Myths of the Middle Ages by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
I had no time to make gibbets; a forest too, as that was a steppe-land, was nowhere in view.
From Pan Michael An Historical Novel of Poland, the Ukraine, and Turkey. by Henryk Sienkiewicz
I would just as soon believe these pullets, which I am about to eat, are alive, as that a man who has been gibbeted eight days is not dead.”
From Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer
A certain Mansell of Otery is gibbeted as a terror to evil doers in a way which would form a sufficient ground for an action for libel in these degenerate days.—Ship,
From The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 by Alexander Barclay
How strange to think of the tiny community in a remote valley of Asia Minor, eighteen centuries since, thus gibbeted for ever!
From The Expositor's Bible: Colossians and Philemon by Alexander Maclaren
Voltaire forgave his when he had gibbeted them in his writings.
From Voltaire: A Sketch of his Life and Works by G. W. (George William) Foote
Every one remembers how even the late Laureate gibbeted his Dons--how 'One Discussed his tutor, rough to common men.
From Aspects of Modern Oxford by A. D. (Alfred Denis) Godley
Two pleas only can justify disinterring and gibbeting an author's private life—either his having done the same by others, or his having made the public the confidant of his individual experience.
From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 20. July, 1877. by Various
Now he may not be quite so savage perhaps as Colonel Kirke, nor find so much sport in gibbeting; but he is equally pitiless, and his price no doubt would be higher.'
From Lorna Doone; a Romance of Exmoor by R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore
I think your success in gibbeting me is not certain.
From Romola by George Eliot
It was not until 1752, by an Act of 25 George II., that gibbeting was legally recognised.
From Bygone Punishments by William Andrews
It walks abroad, it continues its ravages, whilst you are gibbeting the carcass or demolishing the tomb.
From The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12) by Edmund Burke
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
