strappado
IPA: strˈæpˈɑdoʊ
noun
- A form of torture in which the victim is hung from the ceiling by a rope attached to the hands, which are tied together behind the victim's back.
verb
- (transitive) To torture by means of this device.
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Examples of "strappado" in Sentences
- Those who do the reverse expose themselves to a sound strappado.
- It crucifies worse than any tyrant; no torture, no strappado, no bodily punishment is like unto it.
- For the record, strappado -- the act of tying a prisoner's arms behind his back and hoisting him upwards -- is also known as a "stress position."
- He describes the ghetto (p. 171), the police arrangements of the place which he finds in the main highly efficient, and the cruel punishment of the strappado.
- In Morocco he claims he underwent the strappado torture of being hung for hours from his wrists, and scalpel cuts to his chest and penis and that a CIA officer was a regular interrogator.
- The strappado as described by Smollett, however, is a more severe form of torture even than that practised by the Inquisition, and we can only hope that his description of its brutality is highly coloured.
- “But thy ambition must go to sleep for a while, Scharfgerichter, for the stuff that came hither to-day is for dungeon and cord, or perhaps a touch of the rack or strappado — there is no honor to win on them.”
- During his trial, he smuggled out to his daughter from prison a letter telling her of his innocence no matter what he said publicly after torture by thumb-screws, leg-screws, and the infamous strappado that ripped his shoulders apart.
- Today, a torturer is likely to equip himself with non-specialized, dual-use items like a baseball bats, cables, iron pipes, pliers, sticks, and maybe a hook on the ceiling for the strappado (suspension by the wrists, tied behind the back).
- The garrucha or strappado and the garrotes, combined with the water-torture and the rack, represented the survival of the fittest in the natural selection of torments concerning which the Holy Office in Italy and Spain had such a vast experience.
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