gibbet
noun
a gallows with a projecting arm at the top, from which the bodies of criminals were formerly hung in chains and left suspended after execution.
gibbets
-
present tense formof gibbet (3rd person singular).present tense
Used to describe things happening now or regularly.
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.
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
We have put her away in an old chest with hoops and tie-wigs and gibbets and pirates and Newgate ordinaries and rotten boroughs and watchet ribbands.
From The Passionate Elopement by Compton MacKenzie
What chains, what prison, what gibbets had sufficed thereunto?
From The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by John Payne
