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Examples

  • Tu étais un vrai bourreau des coeurs, your smile would break a mother's heart, thus she'd talk.

    Excerpt: Animal's People by Indra Sinha 2008

  • “Comment, bourreau! tu fais des cris!” — “How, hangman! thou bellowest!”

    A Philosophical Dictionary 2007

  • Mais on ne se soustrait pas ainsi à son destin: en tant qu'expert psycho-criminologique, elle est appelée sur une scène de crime - une jeune femme retrouvée avec une hideuse balafre qui vaut à son bourreau le surnom de 'l'Homme qui rit'.

    pinku-tk Diary Entry pinku-tk 2007

  • “They thought I was a bourreau an executioner, so after they passed the bottle, they bound my arms to my sides.”

    The Serpent and the Rainbow Wade Davis 1985

  • Finally, there were three positions of note: the bourreau, or executioner, whose task it was to enforce the collective decisions of the society; the chasseur, or hunter, who was dispatched to bring culprits before the society; and the sentinelle, who was positioned at the gate as a scout to prevent unwelcome individuals from entering a society gathering.

    The Serpent and the Rainbow Wade Davis 1985

  • Balzac, while being _un bourreau d'argent_, would have thought himself dishonored in subordinating his art to questions of commercialism; M. de Girardin only esteemed literature in so far as it was a profitable business.

    Women in the Life of Balzac Juanita Helm Floyd

  • Tristan has no sword, begs one of the _bourreau_, and is refused.

    A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 To the Close of the 19th Century George Saintsbury 1889

  • At Warsaw they call my aunt, on account of her abrupt manners, _le bourreau bienfaisant_.

    Without Dogma Henryk Sienkiewicz 1881

  • En parlant de lui on ne disait plus que “le bourreau”.

    Le Petit Chose (part 1) Histoire d'un Enfant Alphonse Daudet 1868

  • _Celastrus scandens_, "bourreau des arbres" of the Canadian French.

    The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Complete Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

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  • Exécuteur des jugements criminels (spécial. de la peine de mort).

    April 8, 2007