gallows

1 of 2

noun

gal·​lows ˈga-(ˌ)lōz How to pronounce gallows (audio)
-ləz,
in sense 3 also
-ləs How to pronounce gallows (audio)
plural gallows or gallowses
1
a
: a frame usually of two upright posts and a transverse beam from which criminals are hanged

called also gallows tree

b
: the punishment of hanging
2
: a structure consisting of an upright frame with a crosspiece
3

gallows

2 of 2

adjective

: deserving the gallows

Examples of gallows in a Sentence

Noun He was sentenced to death on the gallows.
Recent Examples on the Web
Noun
Parker Lyons, a senior financial analyst at Twitter, fired off a series of gallows-humor tweets late in the week joking about LinkedIn recruiters circling and about angst over checking his email. Sarah E. Needleman, WSJ, 5 Nov. 2022 In the end, Poe has the opportunity to turn Landor in and send him to the gallows, but instead decides the detective has suffered enough and burns the evidence. Megan McCluskey, Time, 6 Jan. 2023 That subplot is harrowing, but not without humor, albeit of the gallows variety. Odie Henderson, BostonGlobe.com, 21 Nov. 2022 For Joseph, the noose and gallows erected in front of the Capitol by the insurrectionists and the violent mobs spilling into the building were old wine in new bottles. Washington Post, 2 Nov. 2022 The huge wood-and-metal platform included a representation of the gallows used to put 38 Dakota men to death at the hands of the state in 1862. Helen Lewis, The Atlantic, 3 Oct. 2022 For 650 years, crowds swarmed Oxford Street to heckle convicts being carted from the prison at one end to the gallows at the other. Alexander Smith, NBC News, 15 Aug. 2022 Her grandson, meanwhile, expressed shock at seeing for the first time the noose hanging from a gallows meant for Pence. Amanda Erickson, Washington Post, 10 June 2022 From the looks of things, there is another car whose appointment with the gallows pole is drawing near. Jack Fitzgerald, Car and Driver, 14 July 2022
Adjective
There is a gallows humor in their songs about addiction and inertia, with a strong anti-capitalist streak to boot. David Renshaw, WIRED, 26 Dec. 2023 For some Hawkeye fans, there was a gallows humor to staking free drinks on Iowa’s ability to score points. Daniel Wu, Washington Post, 4 Dec. 2023 The song’s narrator has been sentenced to death, and in each verse, a member of her family arrives beneath the shade of the gallows tree, not to save her, but to watch the rope tighten around her throat. Chris Richards, Washington Post, 7 Apr. 2020 The gallows humorists of the day, mimicking flight attendants, told travelers to turn back their watches to the 1950s. Alan Cowell, New York Times, 6 Sep. 2019 Not the waking up in the embrace of corpses under a gallows part. Dana Snitzky, Longreads, 13 Aug. 2019 As a lot of people have this gallows sense of humor doing impossibly difficult things. Gogo Lidz, Newsweek, 18 June 2015 At the other extreme, William Hooper conjures apocalyptic scenes with a gallows sense of humor. Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times, 13 Sep. 2017 However, behind this delightful French treat lies a dark past as Buttes Chaumont was once a former trash dump and gallows ground. Josh Lee, Vogue, 31 Aug. 2017

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'gallows.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

Noun

Middle English galwes, galwes, plural of galwe, going back to Old English galga, gealga, going back to Germanic *galgōn "pole, stake, pole on which a condemned person was hung" (whence Old Saxon galgo "gallows, stake," Old High German galga, galgo, Old Norse galgi, Gothic galga "stake, cross"), going back to dialectal Indo-European *ǵholgh-, whence also Lithuanian žalgà "thin stake" and perhaps Armenian jałk

First Known Use

Noun

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

Adjective

15th century, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of gallows was before the 12th century

Dictionary Entries Near gallows

Cite this Entry

“Gallows.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gallows. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

gallows

noun
gal·​lows
ˈgal-(ˌ)ōz,
-əz
plural gallows or gallowses
1
: a structure from which criminals are hanged
2
: the punishment of hanging
was sentenced to the gallows

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