gibbet
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
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to hang on a gibbet.
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to put to death by hanging on a gibbet.
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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
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have been gibbetingperfect progressive
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has been gibbetingperfect progressive
Past
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gibbetedsimple
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had gibbetedperfect
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was gibbetingprogressive
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were gibbetingprogressive
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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
The gibbet has long since given way to a graceful fountain, but Pizarro's spirit still inhabits the Plaza de Armas.
From Time Magazine Archive
Thereby, dead and dangling from its gibbet, hangs a tale.
From Time Magazine Archive
Well beyond the gibbet, two men in mail hauberks stood leaning on their spears in front of the long low building by the water, the one with the slate roof.
From "A Clash of Kings" by George R.R. Martin
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
It was a sad and strange sight to behold all these elegant cavaliers and beautiful women passing, like one of the processions which Goya has painted, under the blackened skeletons and tall grim gibbets.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 359, September 1845 by Various
Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius, secretly dissected human corpses, finding them hanging on public gibbets or competing with dogs for those incompletely buried in cemeteries.
From Our Legal Heritage June 2011 (Sixth) Edition by Reilly, S. A.
It was the fault of one man: Pownall has gibbeted the rascal; Epsom fell through the "knavery of Mr. John Livingstone, an apothecary."
From Highways and Byways in Surrey by Thomson, Hugh
The pink-cheeked young patrolman, swinging back on his beat, tattooed with his ash night-stick on the gas-pipe frame and peered indifferently down at the battered and gibbeted crockery.
From Never-Fail Blake by Stringer, Arthur
The cause he persecuted has made deathless the banished refugee, and has gibbeted the great monarch as a tyrant, whose misplanned severities wrought the ruin of his successor and his army.
From The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Exodus by Chadwick, G. A.
"It is to be hoped," says Mr. Dodd, the local historian, "that the statement about the man being gibbeted alive is a fiction."
From Bygone Punishments by Andrews, William
Half-penny without date, but no doubt struck in 1794, when a rumor reached London that Paine had been guillotined: Paine gibbeted; above, devil smoking a pipe; reverse, monkey dancing; legend, "We dance, Paine swings."
From The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Volume III. 1791-1804 by Paine, Thomas
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 Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
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 Burke, Edmund
It walks abroad, it continues its ravages, whilst you are gibbeting the carcase, or demolishing the tomb.
From Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke by Burke, Edmund
The treasurer's accounts for Derbyshire, for 1815-16, show, says Dr. Cox, that the punishment of gibbeting involved a serious inroad on the county finances.
From Bygone Punishments by Andrews, William
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
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.
