Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The penalty of death for the commission of a crime.
- noun The practice or legal sanction of allowing the imposition of the penalty of death for people convicted of committing certain crimes.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
punishment bydeath
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun putting a condemned person to death
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
capital + punishment, originally by beheading or decapitating
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Examples
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