Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Mental or physical torture used to obtain information or a confession from a prisoner.
Wiktionary
- n. idiomatic intensive rough interrogation in order to extract information or a confession.
WordNet 3.0
- n. interrogation often accompanied by torture to extort information or a confession
Etymologies
- From Freemasonry - the intensive test to become a master mason. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Go thou and seek the crowner, and let him sit o 'my coz; for he's in the third degree of drink, he's drowned: go, look after him.”
“I mention this because yesterday some one who'd run across you at Yemassee told me that you and Helen were exchanging the grip of the third degree under the breakfast-table, and trying to eat your eggs with your left hands.”
“The greatest of them are excesses and insolences of youth, and are offences against the greatest when they are done against religion; and especially great when in violation of public and holy rites, or of the partly – common rites in which tribes and phratries share; and in the second degree great when they are committed against private rites and sepulchres, and in the third degree (not to repeat the acts formerly mentioned), when insults are offered to parents; the fourth kind of violence is when any one, regardless of the authority of the rulers, takes or carries away or makes use of anything which belongs to them, not having their consent; and the fifth kind is when the violation of the civil rights of an individual demands reparation.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘third degree’.
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MiaLuthien's list ♥
gambit, prehensile, coquetry, impunity, genuflect, ensconce, clavicle, delude, beget, castigate, life caching, convoluted and 478 more...
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Idioms or Phrases or "expressions"
like nobody's bui..., soap up, plug away, country club, horse whisperer, cease and desist, eye of the beholder, small-claims court, nut job, heebie-jeebies, hole in the wall, black-tie and 101 more...
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Extraordinary Ordinals
beethoven's ninth, third world, fourth estate, fifth column, second coming, seventh heaven, third degree, second best, first kiss, sixth sense, celestino the fifth, third rock from t... and 12 more...
Tweets
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mialuthien third degree – in police interrogation, originally torture, then colloquially an intensive rough interrogation to extract information or a confession – the term "third degree" being an ironic reference to the Masonic ritual which involves a (symbolic) moral interrogation and illustration that right overcomes wrong Jul 14, 2008