guillotine

American  

[gil-uh-teen, gee-uh-, gil-uh-teen, gee-uh-] / ˈgɪl əˌtin, ˈgi ə-, ˌgɪl əˈtin, ˌgi ə- /

noun

• guillotines
  plural

1. a device for beheading a person by means of a heavy blade that is dropped between two posts serving as guides: widely used during the French Revolution.

2. an instrument for surgically removing the tonsils.

3. any of various machines in which a vertical blade between two parallel uprights descends to cut or trim metal, stacks of paper, etc.

---

verb (used with object)

• guillotines,
  present (3rd person singular)
• guillotined,
  past participle,  past
• guillotining
  present participle

1. to behead by the guillotine.

2. to cut with or as if with a guillotine.

guillotine British  

noun

1. 1. a device for beheading persons, consisting of a weighted blade set between two upright posts

   2. execution by this instrument

2. a device for cutting or trimming sheet material, such as paper or sheet metal, consisting of a blade inclined at a small angle that descends onto the sheet

3. a surgical instrument for removing tonsils, growths in the throat, etc

4. Also called: closure by compartment.  (in Parliament, etc) a form of closure under which a bill is divided into compartments, groups of which must be completely dealt with each day

---

verb

1. to behead (a person) by guillotine

2. (in Parliament, etc) to limit debate on (a bill, motion, etc) by the guillotine

guillotine Cultural  

1. A machine designed for beheading people quickly and with minimal pain. The guillotine, which used a large falling knife blade, was devised by a physician, Joseph Guillotin, during the French Revolution and was used as the official method of execution in France until the twentieth century.

---

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• guillotiner
  noun
• unguillotined
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• guillotines
  plural

Participles

• guillotining
  present
• guillotined
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• guillotine
  simple
• guillotines
  simple
• have guillotined
  perfect
• has guillotined
  perfect
• am guillotining
  progressive
• are guillotining
  progressive
• is guillotining
  progressive
• have been guillotining
  perfect progressive
• has been guillotining
  perfect progressive

Past

• guillotined
  simple
• had guillotined
  perfect
• was guillotining
  progressive
• were guillotining
  progressive
• had been guillotining
  perfect progressive

Future

• will guillotine
  simple
• will have guillotined
  perfect
• will be guillotining
  progressive
• will have been guillotining
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of guillotine

1785–95; named after J. I. Guillotin (1738–1814), French physician who urged its use

Explanation

Invented in France, the guillotine is a device used to behead people convicted of crimes. The guillotine was named after Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a French doctor who promoted the machine because it was a quicker and more humane way to cut off a person’s head. Guillotine is also as verb. The last time the French government guillotined someone was in 1977, and in 1981 the death penalty was abolished in France.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

guillotine guillotines guillotined guillotining

A Southern California man who had a guillotine in the back of his pickup truck has been arrested near the U.S.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2026

They hover with a calculated theatricality: “Hat Rack” drops like a predatory spider; the shovels’ metal scoops are poised like guillotine blades; and “Bottle Rack” dives like a missile—an apt metaphor for their impact.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 30, 2026

A woman protester nearby was dressed as Marie-Antoinette, the queen executed by guillotine during the French revolution.

From Barron's ● May 1, 2026

The Sept. 1 protest had “little to no energy,” according to an internal Portland police summary, before federal officers dispersed the crowd to collect a prop guillotine that had been brought.

From Salon ● Nov. 14, 2025

I trudged back to the living room, feeling as though I were headed for the guillotine.

From "The Rock and the River" by Kekla Magoon

After drying during a series of slow corkscrews, the new magazine’s edges were chopped smooth by guillotines and emerged through an opening.

From New York Times ● Jun. 16, 2024

Even news of guillotines, massacres, and growing public hostility to religion did not deter the most hopeful Francophiles, who dismissed such accounts as exaggerations by British propagandists.

From Slate ● Oct. 24, 2022

“During downturns,” Stern says, “the financial guillotines hit hardest in regions where clusters are weakest.”

From Nature ● May 3, 2016

A reviewer for an English newspaper saw guillotines.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2015

He loved to think of himself as a woodman swinging an axe against rotten institutions and dying beliefs; but he weighted no guillotines.

From Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle by Henry Noel Brailsford

Because of this mediocre king, who clung so desperately to the fantasies of absolutism that he was later overthrown and guillotined by his own people, the American experiment with republican government was able to commence.

From Slate ● May 30, 2025

The French have maintained a love-hate relationship with kings ever since they guillotined King Louis XVI in 1793.

From Washington Times ● Mar. 23, 2023

In the wake of these works, Büchner’s Danton, a drunk with a death wish who wallows in self-pity and ends up guillotined, is hardly captivating.

From New York Times ● Jan. 19, 2023

Marie Antoinette sent the jewellery away for safekeeping before she was guillotined during the French revolution.

From BBC ● Nov. 9, 2021

That was Rahel being Sydney Carton being Charles Darnay, as he stood on the steps, waiting to be guillotined, in the Classics Illustrated comic’s version of A Tale of Two Cities.

From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy

The “age of chivalry is gone,” Edmund Burke lamented after the guillotining of Marie Antoinette of France on Oct.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026

France likes to dream of revolution, ever re-enacting the popular uprising of 1789 that led to the guillotining of the king and queen and the abolition of the monarchy three years later.

From New York Times ● Mar. 24, 2023

Otherwise – as in the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda and the guillotining of Andrea and Maddalena in Giordano's Andrea Chénier – the pleasure is all in the anticipation.

From The Guardian ● Jan. 20, 2011

Britons who prize the dignity of Parliament were far from amused by the guillotining and the cavorting.

From Time Magazine Archive

Mirabeau, the orator of the Revolution, had already disappeared, being so fortunate as to die naturally, before the practice of mutual guillotining was established.

From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 by William Chambers