guillotine
noun
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.
guillotines
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pluralof guillotine.plural
The grammatical form denoting more than one person, place, thing, or idea.
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present tense formof guillotine (3rd person singular).present tense
Used to describe things happening now or regularly.
guillotinenouna 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.
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.
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
That's all one to me, since the other children call us already little thieves,—little guillotines!
From The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 4 of 6 by Eugène Sue
