Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A form of torture in which the victim is lifted off the ground by a rope attached to the wrists, which have been tied behind the back, and then is dropped partway to the ground with a jerk.
- noun The apparatus employed in this method of torture.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A punishment or torture which consisted in raising the victim to a certain height by a rope and letting him fall suddenly, the rope being secured to his person in such a way that the jerk in falling would inflict violent pain.
- To torture by the strappado.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To punish or torture by the strappado.
- noun A military punishment formerly practiced, which consisted in drawing an offender to the top of a beam and letting him fall to the length of the rope, by which means a limb was often dislocated.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A form of
torture in which the victim ishung from the ceiling by a rope attached to the hands, which are tied together behind the victim's back. - verb transitive To torture by means of this device.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a form of torture in which the hands are tied behind a person's back and they are lifted off the ground by a rope tied to their wrists, then allowed to drop until their fall is checked with a jerk by the rope
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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During his trial, he smuggled out to his daughter from prison a letter telling her of his innocence no matter what he said publicly after torture by thumb-screws, leg-screws, and the infamous strappado that ripped his shoulders apart.
Dan Agin: A Demon in the Head I: Madness and Murderous Violence 2009
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“But thy ambition must go to sleep for a while, Scharfgerichter, for the stuff that came hither to-day is for dungeon and cord, or perhaps a touch of the rack or strappado — there is no honor to win on them.”
Anne of Geierstein 2008
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For the record, strappado -- the act of tying a prisoner's arms behind his back and hoisting him upwards -- is also known as a "stress position."
Bob Cesca: Liveblogging The Republican Convention - Day Two 2008
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Those who do the reverse expose themselves to a sound strappado.
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Today, a torturer is likely to equip himself with non-specialized, dual-use items like a baseball bats, cables, iron pipes, pliers, sticks, and maybe a hook on the ceiling for the strappado (suspension by the wrists, tied behind the back).
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It crucifies worse than any tyrant; no torture, no strappado, no bodily punishment is like unto it.
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In Morocco he claims he underwent the strappado torture of being hung for hours from his wrists, and scalpel cuts to his chest and penis and that a CIA officer was a regular interrogator.
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The strappado as described by Smollett, however, is a more severe form of torture even than that practised by the Inquisition, and we can only hope that his description of its brutality is highly coloured.
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He describes the ghetto (p. 171), the police arrangements of the place which he finds in the main highly efficient, and the cruel punishment of the strappado.
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The garrucha or strappado and the garrotes, combined with the water-torture and the rack, represented the survival of the fittest in the natural selection of torments concerning which the Holy Office in Italy and Spain had such a vast experience.
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From there he was sent in chains to Goa where they threatened to subject him to the strappado—the Inquisition’s answer to bungee jumping, where a man was dropped from a height attached to a rope.
Before the East India Company | William Dalrymple William Dalrymple 2023
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