the.com/guillotine
A device once used to carry out executions by beheading, notably during the French Revolution.
means A device with a heavy angled blade that drops down a frame to behead someone quickly, once used as a method of capital punishment, especially in Revolutionary France.
from Named after Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a French physician who, in 1789, proposed a swift, mechanical beheading device as a more humane and egalitarian alternative to the axe, sword, or hanging — methods whose brutality and ease varied by executioner's skill and the condemned's social rank. He didn't invent the machine (similar beheading devices had existed earlier in Europe) and reportedly opposed capital punishment altogether, but his name stuck to it, to his family's lasting dismay — some even petitioned to change their surname once the device became the infamous symbol of the Terror.
- origin myth
- named for a doctor who opposed the death penalty
- design intent
- meant to be more humane than axes or ropes
- last use
- france executed someone by it in 1977
- legislative sense
- also a procedural trick to force a vote deadline