Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One who has escaped the gallows though deserving hanging; a villain: used in objurgation.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun colloq. One who has narrowly escaped the gallows for his crimes.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun colloquial, dated A
criminal who has narrowlyescaped beinghanged .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Perhaps the reader will say, "Oh, it must have been published in an insignificant sheet printed in some obscure corner of the state; perhaps by a gang of 'squatters,' in the Dismal Swamp, universally regarded as a pest, and edited by some scapegallows, who was detested by the whole community."
Battles and Victories of Allen Allensworth, A. M., Ph. D., Lieutenant-Colonel, Retired, U. S. Army 1914
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Frustration of justice is implied by scapegallows, slipgibbet, and sliphalter.
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‘scapegallows’; all names given to those who, however they might have escaped, were justly owed to the gallows, and might still “go upstairs to bed”.
English Past and Present Richard Chenevix Trench 1846
bilby commented on the word scapegallows
"One who deserves and has narrowly escaped the gallows, a slip-gibbet, one for whom the gallows is said to groan."
- Francis Grose, 'The Vulgar Tongue.'
September 12, 2008