lynch
verb (used with object)
to put to death, especially by hanging, by mob action and without legal authority.
lynch
1 American
[linch]
/ lɪntʃ /
verb (used with object)
-
lynches,
present (3rd person singular)
-
lynched,
past participle, past
-
lynching
present participle
-
to put to death, especially by hanging, by mob action and without legal authority.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, thousands of southern African Americans were lynched by white mobs.
-
to criticize, condemn, etc., in public.
He’s been unfairly lynched in the media.
Lynch
2
American
[linch]
/ lɪntʃ /
noun
Lynch
1
British
/ lɪntʃ /
noun
-
David. born 1946, US film director; his work includes the films Eraserhead (1977), Blue Velvet (1986), Wild at Heart (1990), Mulholland Drive (2001), and Inland Empire (2006), and the television series Twin Peaks (1990)
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John, known as Jack Lynch. 1917–99, Irish statesman; prime minister of the Republic of Ireland (1966–73; 1977–79)
lynch
2
British
/ lɪntʃ /
verb
Synonym Usage
See hang.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
lynchsimple
-
lynchessimple
-
have lynchedperfect
-
has lynchedperfect
-
am lynchingprogressive
-
are lynchingprogressive
-
is lynchingprogressive
-
have been lynchingperfect progressive
-
has been lynchingperfect progressive
Past
-
lynchedsimple
-
had lynchedperfect
-
was lynchingprogressive
-
were lynchingprogressive
-
had been lynchingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of lynch
An Americanism first recorded in 1825–35; verb use of lynch in lynch law
Explanation
To lynch is to murder, or unlawfully kill. When an angry mob kills someone they believe is guilty of a crime, they lynch that person. Through history, when a group of people murders someone, especially by hanging him by the neck, they are usually said to lynch him. This was unfortunately not uncommon during the Civil Rights struggle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the American South: if a white community believed an African American had done something wrong, they would sometimes lynch him. Lynch is named after Justice Charles Lynch, who condoned mob justice during the American Revolution.
Vocabulary lists containing lynch
Life Is So Good
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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Scrabble: Words with no Vowels
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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:
I have always been interested in the psychology of lynch mobs.
From Seattle Times ● May 4, 2023
He compared the riot to “a lynch mob of 150 years ago,” and lamented how many Americans have become “hate-filled.”
From Washington Post ● Jan. 27, 2023
Angry readers wrote to The Times in response to my favorable review of the series, insisting I was part of a lynch mob: “Shame on you!”
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 14, 2021
John Edgar Wideman’s 1973 “The Lynchers,” about a group of Black men who plan to lynch a white police officer, is doleful and ambitiously literary, anticipating Wideman’s distinguished writing career.
From New York Times ● Jul. 6, 2020
“Oh, that. Well, to hear the Post tell it, we lynch ’em for breakfast; the Journal doesn’t care; and the Times is so wrapped up in its duty to posterity it bores you to death.
From "Go Set a Watchman: A Novel" by Harper Lee
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Merrill Lynch set up shop; some started calling the downtown “Wall Street West.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 6, 2026
Although the photographs share the unnerving intensity characteristic of his films, Lynch understood the two disciplines as distinct.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026
For Griffin, it illuminated the way Lynch came to inhabit the city he called home for more than half a century.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026
Richard Neal and Stephen Lynch, who are both in their 70s and have collectively been in office for more than six decades, fended off younger and leftier challengers.
From Slate ● Sep. 2, 2026
What sounded to most investors like a trivial piece of information was to Eisman the big news: Merrill Lynch owned a meaningful amount of subprime mortgage securities.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
In Zambia, the hearsay about disappearing genitals first gained traction in March when a woman was lynched, going on to spread panic across the border in Tanzania.
From BBC ● Sep. 3, 2026
“Leopoldstadt” went on to win best play, while best musical revival went to another searing work about antisemitism: “Parade,” starring Ben Platt as Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was lynched in 1915 in Georgia.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 12, 2023
The white woman who accused Black teenager Emmett Till of making improper advances before he was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 has died in hospice care in Louisiana, a coroner’s report shows.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 27, 2023
His treatments of religious themes like martyrdoms refer obliquely to the Black experience in Jim Crow America; the Kentucky-born artist was just a teenager when Emmett Till was lynched in 1955.
From New York Times ● Oct. 20, 2021
As of 1920, about 13 out of every 100 black children died in infancy, or roughly 20,000 children each year—compared to 28 people who were lynched in a year.
From "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" by Steven D. Levitt
The National Memorial is the first institution of its kind dedicated to the legacy of the Black Americans who were the victims of the racial terror of lynching.
From Salon ● Apr. 18, 2025
“When he was doing the Ida B. Wells, I’d come visit Richard and he’d have a stack of seven different books on Ida B. Wells — lynching, photographs and history,” Ott said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 18, 2023
"To the media court, to the lynching that has been reserved for me, I have only my word to defend myself."
From BBC ● Dec. 14, 2023
But the title’s blunt, irrefutable statement carries Allison Russell toward harsh thoughts about racism, slavery, exploitation, lynching and sin — and then to an unexpected coda.
From New York Times ● Dec. 6, 2023
Mrs. Malloy says Negro people came here to escape lynching and inhumane treatment.
From "Betty Before X" by Ilyasah Shabazz and Renée Watson
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.
