TORTURING

agonizing, agonising, excruciating, harrowing, torturing, torturous, torturesome

(adjective) extremely painful

torture, torturing

(noun) the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason; “it required unnatural torturing to extract a confession”

Source: WordNet® 3.1


Noun

torturing (countable and uncountable, plural torturings)

An act of torture

Verb

torturing

present participle of torture

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

1 February 2025

GRIP

(noun) an intellectual hold or understanding; “a good grip on French history”; “they kept a firm grip on the two top priorities”; “he was in the grip of a powerful emotion”; “a terrible power had her in its grasp”


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Coffee Trivia

Coffee has initially been a food – chewed, not sipped. Early African tribes consume coffee by grinding the berries together, adding some animal fat, and rolling the treats into tiny edible energy balls.

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