Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A barbarous punishment inflicted among the Persians, by confining the victim in a hollow tree. Five holes were made—one for the head, and the others for the arms and legs. These parts were anointed with honey to attract wasps, and in this plight the criminal was left till he died.
Brewer.
Wiktionary
- n. A form of execution, among the ancient Persians, in which the victim is fastened into a hollow boat, covered in honey and exposed to insects until the victim's death.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An ancient mode of punishing criminals among the Persians, by confining the victim in a trough, with his head and limbs smeared with honey or the like, and exposed to the sun and to insects until he died.
Examples
“The ancient Persians developed a gruesome practice called scaphism, which involved force-feeding a person milk and honey, lashing him to a boat or hollow tree trunk, and then allowing flies to infest the victim's anus and increasingly gangrenous flesh.”
“In my more barbaric moments I toy with the idea of bringing back the death penalty for crimes like this - but not execution by hanging - I was thinking execution by scaphism.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘scaphism’.
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Murdered, you say?
Terms of homicide; weapons, poisons, synonyms &c.
slaughtered, goes and gets her..., done in, rubbed out, bumped off, malice aforethought, marble baluster, lead spoon, stone idol, atropine, burned, clipped and 90 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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-ism's -logies
acosmism, absurdism, absolutism, ableism, aestheticism, alarmism, allotheism, anachronism, animalculism, analogism, animatism, animism and 464 more...
gangerh Oh death where is thy sting? May 14, 2010
jmjarmstrong JM cannot quite believe that there is a word for death by being covered in honey and left in the hot sun = scaphism. Feb 1, 2009
chained_bear Bloody hell, who THINKS of this stuff?! *is mad that anyone ever did this to another person*
(originally, mistakenly posted on Reesetee's list page instead of here. Oops!) Oct 15, 2007
oroboros Boy, I'll say! Ugh 'n eewww. Oct 14, 2007
uselessness Evil. Absolutely evil. Oct 14, 2007