Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The act of beheading; decapitation; the state of one beheaded.
- n. Specifically In surgery, the removal of the head of the child in cases of difficult parturition.
- n. In conchology, the removal—by death, growth, or accident—of the upper whorls of a spiral shell after the animal has ceased to occupy them. See cut in middle column.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The act of beheading or state of one beheaded; -- especially used of the execution of St. John the Baptist.
- n. A painting representing the beheading of a saint or martyr, esp. of St. John the Baptist.
Etymologies
- From the Latin decollatus, from de + collum. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“He mused aloud about that very simple reaction which we call the sense of beauty and have resolutely sophisticated ever since criticism existed -- I intent meanwhile and eating most of a mallard as sanguine as a decollation of the Baptist.”
“When they had finished the decollation, they again consulted what was next to be done.”
“Anticipating the glory of extirpating heresy, he is feeling the sharp edge of an axe, to be employed in the decollation of the enemies to the true faith.”
“Wherefore king Henrie with a mightie armie (on the tuesdaie after the feast of the decollation of S. John) entred into the realme of France, and burned manie townes and villages, approching the same day néere to the towne of Maunt, where the French king was thought to be.”
Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) Henrie the Second
“The treasons of its civil wars had created so many executions, that a Gascon, wishing to prove that his father had been beheaded as a nobleman, instead of hanged like a dog or a citizen, asserted the decollation to have been so expertly executed _en Grève_, that the sufferer was unconscious of his end.”
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 341, March, 1844
“There one finds her upon the day of the decollation of Saint John the”
“The epoch of the Martyrs here began with the decollation of the priest Perfecto, in 850.”
“And S. Austin rehearseth in a sermon that he made on the occasion of the decollation, by way of example, that there was an innocent man and a true which had lent certain money to another man which denied it him when he asked it.”
“It is read that the decollation of S. John Baptist was established for four causes, like as it is found in the Book of Office.”
“And from that time forth the feast of his decollation was there hallowed, for it was found the same day.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘decollation’.
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Gene Wolfe
Please contribute your favorite words from any of Gene Wolfe’s books to this prize-winning list.
In case you come across words in this list which are too commonplace to fit in, please ...gallipot, roost, badelaire, oblesque, execration, dhole, amschaspand, arctother, chalcedony, penitence, asimi, autarch and 839 more...
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Words gathered while reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.
refectory, soutane, ha-ha, jewelly, girt, centenary, collywobbles, coadjutor, catafalque, beeftea, pierhead, bedad and 235 more...
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