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.
guillotining
-
present participleof guillotine.present participle
A verb form that is used in progressive verb constructions and may also function as a modifier or a gerund.
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.
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
The guillotining of his father made Louis Philippe the Orleanist pretender to the throne.
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
