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Examples
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Tu étais un vrai bourreau des coeurs, your smile would break a mother's heart, thus she'd talk.
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“Comment, bourreau! tu fais des cris!” — “How, hangman! thou bellowest!”
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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'.
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“They thought I was a bourreau an executioner, so after they passed the bottle, they bound my arms to my sides.”
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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.
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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.
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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
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At Warsaw they call my aunt, on account of her abrupt manners, _le bourreau bienfaisant_.
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En parlant de lui on ne disait plus que “le bourreau”.
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_Celastrus scandens_, "bourreau des arbres" of the Canadian French.
theacrobat commented on the word bourreau
Exécuteur des jugements criminels (spécial. de la peine de mort).
April 8, 2007