pillory
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
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to set in the pillory.
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to expose to public derision, ridicule, or abuse.
The candidate mercilessly pilloried his opponent.
noun
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a wooden framework into which offenders were formerly locked by the neck and wrists and exposed to public abuse and ridicule
-
exposure to public scorn or abuse
verb
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to expose to public scorn or ridicule
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to punish by putting in a pillory
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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pillorysimple
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pilloriessimple
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have pilloriedperfect
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has pilloriedperfect
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am pilloryingprogressive
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are pilloryingprogressive
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is pilloryingprogressive
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have been pilloryingperfect progressive
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has been pilloryingperfect progressive
Past
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pilloriedsimple
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had pilloriedperfect
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was pilloryingprogressive
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were pilloryingprogressive
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had been pilloryingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of pillory
First recorded in 1225–75; Middle English pyllory, from Old French pilori, perhaps from Medieval Latin pīlōrium, equivalent to Latin pīl(a) “pillar” ( see pile 1) + -ōrium noun suffix ( see -ory 2), though Romance variants such as Provençal espillori suggest a less transparent source
Explanation
A pillory is a wooden frame with cutouts for someone's head and hands. Long ago, people found guilty of a crime could be sentenced to be locked in a pillory for a certain amount of time for punishment but also for public humiliation. The verb pillory means to be punished by being locked in a pillory, but references to this form of punishment are historic and it is no longer used — you might see references today to someone in a pillory in a cartoon. As a modern verb, pillory means both to criticize harshly and to expose to public ridicule. Someone who is caught doing something immoral may be pilloried and people who believe they have been unfairly criticized say they have been pilloried, but often only after they've been exposed!
Vocabulary lists containing pillory
I've Never Been So Insulted...
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The Witch of Blackbird Pond
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The Taming of the Shrew
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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:
Maria died in 1821; the two older children, Maria and Elizabeth, died four years later after being sent to a typhoid-plagued school Charlotte would pillory as Lowood in “Jane Eyre.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 14, 2026
City hall, the slave market, and town pillory were all there, and the wharf on the East River “made it a rendezvous for pirates,” writes Sobol.
From Barron's ● Mar. 1, 2026
But lower courts are free to pillory SCOTUS’s decisions as long as they apply them fairly.
From Slate ● Dec. 10, 2024
But, he said, “this report needs to lead to meaningful change. If it only leads to pillory and blame of the exceptional majority of officers then only criminals will benefit.”
From Washington Post ● Mar. 21, 2023
She could not face the family, or the whispering and staring that would turn her own family pew into a pillory.
From "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth George Speare
They've called their album "the record", in a play on the faux-humility of Bob Dylan's backing group The Band; while the song Leonard Cohen simultaneously praises and pillories one of Dacus's inspirations.
From BBC ● Mar. 30, 2023
Recall children in dunce caps, perjurers in pillories, adulterers branded with scarlet letters.
From New York Times ● Mar. 18, 2022
The fact that these authorities do not address the general public, unlike the intellectuals Ross pillories, does not raise his democratic hackles.
From Salon ● Dec. 25, 2021
I shall have to humiliate them in the pillories of the national charts, and in doing so buy myself a big house.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 29, 2019
Some evil has to be done with the good, unless we’re going back to pillories and hermitages, to keep ourselves unspotted from the world.
From The Carleton Case by Clark, Ellery H.
Clarke is being pilloried for being overly negative in the way he set his team up, when he really wasn't.
From BBC ● Jun. 27, 2026
Influential iconoclastic thinker Richard Dawkins was then pilloried for suggesting that perhaps it already has.
From Slate ● May 25, 2026
Philadelphia is presenting itself as the US World Cup host city offering fans the best value for money, with affordable transport, accommodation and food while other venues are pilloried for gouging supporters.
From Barron's ● Apr. 29, 2026
He was pilloried, and declared bankrupt more than once.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 18, 2026
Arriving in Washington with the same sort of desire and energy to contribute, though, she’d been roundly spurned, pilloried for taking on a policy role in the White House’s work on health-care reform.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
Tom Lehrer, an acerbic songwriter and Harvard-trained mathematician who rose to fame in the 1950s and ’60s by pillorying the sensibilities of the day, has died at age 97.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 27, 2025
That didn’t stop the Energy Department from pillorying the findings.
From Salon ● May 6, 2025
Straight after his annual Remembrance Day pillorying, James McClean could find himself in the spotlight on Thursday, when the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland meet for a friendly in Dublin.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 15, 2018
Giving in to one of the more primal forces of human nature, we establish our identity by subscribing to groupthink and pillorying those with different ideas.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 28, 2018
It is not however till November 1739, two years and a half after the pillorying of Walpole on the Haymarket boards, that Fielding is again clearly seen, 'laying about' him, in those clamourous eighteenth-century politics.
From Henry Fielding: a Memoir by Godden, G. M.
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.
