Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a public executioner
  • noun the gallows
  • noun death
  • noun the devil

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Jack Ketch, the public executioner during the reigns of both Charles II of England and his brother James II.

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Examples

  • The hangman has ever since been called Jack Ketch, because a man of that name went hanging and hanging, all day long, in the train of Jeffreys.

    A Child's History of England 2007

  • The hangman has ever since been called Jack Ketch, because a man of that name went hanging and hanging, all day long, in the train of Jeffreys.

    A child`s history of England 1852

  • It was a sort of cooking-room, with an immense fire-place flanked by a couple of cauldrons, and was called Jack Ketch's Kitchen, because the quarters of persons executed for treason were there boiled by the hangman in oil, pitch, and tar, before they were affixed on the city gates, or on London

    Jack Sheppard A Romance William Harrison Ainsworth 1843

  • The hangman has ever since been called Jack Ketch, because a man of that name went hanging and hanging, all day long, in the train of Jeffreys.

    A Child's History of England Charles Dickens 1841

  • Byron thought nothing of Keats -- "Jack Ketch," as he called him.

    The Art of Letters Robert Lynd 1914

  • Then a chap comes along -- I s'pose he's called their Jack Ketch -- and he carries a sword that's partly made like a cutlass and partly like a butcher's cleaver, with which he slices off all their heads like so many carrots. "

    The Penang Pirate and, The Lost Pinnace

  • We shan't have to go any further with the search for clues in this case; but I think I shall have to ask you, my friend, a few little questions in private, and in the interests of a gentleman called Jack Ketch! "

    Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces Thomas W. Hanshew 1885

  • Any son of a biscuit eater deserves to dance with Jack Ketch.

    The Bushman Way of Tracking God PhD Bradford Keeney 2010

  • 'I will tell you what I should, under any other circumstances, as soon have thought of telling to--Jack Ketch.'

    Charles Dickens and Uriah Heep hradzka 2010

  • Back in the good old days of public executions, I continued, when Jack Ketch was dangling felons from Tyburn Tree, the Mob would regularly break out into the most glorious displays of drinking and fighting and, most especially, fornicating.

    Black Butterfly Mark Gatiss 2008

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