PUT TO DEATH

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does put to death mean? 

• PUT TO DEATH (verb)
  The verb PUT TO DEATH has 1 sense:

1. kill as a means of socially sanctioned punishment

  Familiarity information: PUT TO DEATH used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PUT TO DEATH (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Kill as a means of socially sanctioned punishment

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Synonyms:

execute; put to death

Context example:

In some states, criminals are executed

Hypernyms (to "put to death" is one way to...):

kill (cause to die; put to death, usually intentionally or knowingly)

penalise; penalize; punish (impose a penalty on; inflict punishment on)

Verb group:

execute (murder in a planned fashion)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "put to death"):

crucify (kill by nailing onto a cross)

burn (execute by tying to a stake and setting alight)

hang; string up (kill by hanging)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Sentence example:

They want to put to death the prisoners

 Context examples 

It seemed that after we had left, Prendergast and his gang had proceeded to put to death the five remaining prisoners.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The old king was still very angry with his youngest son, and thought that he really meant to have taken away his life; so he called his court together, and asked what should be done, and all agreed that he ought to be put to death.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Bolgolam, the admiral, could not preserve his temper, but, rising up in fury, said, he wondered how the secretary durst presume to give his opinion for preserving the life of a traitor; that the services you had performed were, by all true reasons of state, the great aggravation of your crimes; that you, who were able to extinguish the fire by discharge of urine in her majesty’s apartment (which he mentioned with horror), might, at another time, raise an inundation by the same means, to drown the whole palace; and the same strength which enabled you to bring over the enemy’s fleet, might serve, upon the first discontent, to carry it back; that he had good reasons to think you were a Big-endian in your heart; and, as treason begins in the heart, before it appears in overt-acts, so he accused you as a traitor on that account, and therefore insisted you should be put to death.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Then the king made it known to all the land, that if any person could discover the secret, and find out where it was that the princesses danced in the night, he should have the one he liked best for his wife, and should be king after his death; but whoever tried and did not succeed, after three days and nights, should be put to death.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

That the said Quinbus Flestrin, having brought the imperial fleet of Blefuscu into the royal port, and being afterwards commanded by his imperial majesty to seize all the other ships of the said empire of Blefuscu, and reduce that empire to a province, to be governed by a viceroy from hence, and to destroy and put to death, not only all the Big-endian exiles, but likewise all the people of that empire who would not immediately forsake the Big-endian heresy, he, the said Flestrin, like a false traitor against his most auspicious, serene, imperial majesty, did petition to be excused from the said service, upon pretence of unwillingness to force the consciences, or destroy the liberties and lives of an innocent people.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)