TORTURES

Noun

tortures

plural of torture

Verb

tortures

Third-person singular simple present indicative form of torture

Anagrams

• trouters, tutorers

Source: Wiktionary


TORTURE

Tor"ture, n. Etym: [F.,fr.L. tortura, fr. torquere, tortum, to twist, rack, torture; probably akin to Gr. tre`pein to turn, G. drechsein to turn on a lathe, and perhaps to E. queer. Cf. Contort, Distort, Extort, Retort, Tart, n., Torch, Torment, Tortion, Tort, Trope.]

1. Extreme pain; anguish of body or mind; pang; agony; torment; as, torture of mind. Shak. Ghastly spasm or racking torture. Milton.

2. Especially, severe pain inflicted judicially, either as punishment for a crime, or for the purpose of extorting a confession from an accused person, as by water or fire, by the boot or thumbkin, or by the rack or wheel.

3. The act or process of torturing. Torture, whitch had always been deciared illegal, and which had recently been declared illegal even by the servile judges of that age, was inflicted for the last time in England in the month of May, 1640. Macaulay.

Tor"ture, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Tortured (; p. pr. & vb. n. Torturing.] Etym: [Cf. F. Torturer. ]

1. To put to torture; to pain extremely; to harass; to vex.

2. To punish with torture; to put to the rack; as, to torture an accused person. Shak.

3. To wrest from the proper meaning; to distort. Jar. Taylor.

4. To keep on the stretch, as a bow. [Obs.] The bow tortureth the string. Bacon.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition



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Word of the Day

28 November 2024

SYNCRETISM

(noun) the fusion of originally different inflected forms (resulting in a reduction in the use of inflections)


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