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guillotine

[gil-uh-teen, gee-uh-, gil-uh-teen, gee-uh-] / ˈgɪl əˌtin, ˈgi ə-, ˌgɪl əˈtin, ˌgi ə- /
VERB
decapitate
Synonyms


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

A woman protester nearby was dressed as Marie-Antoinette, the queen executed by guillotine during the French revolution.

From Barron's ● May 1, 2026

Most of the regulations facing the guillotine related to worker health and safety protections.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 22, 2026

The guillotine blade that was allegedly used comes from the Madame Tussauds Chamber of Horrors, by descent from the family of Charles-Henri Sanson, the executioner, whose son Henri may have pulled the lever.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026

The Sept. 1 protest had “little to no energy,” according to an internal Portland police summary, before federal officers dispersed the crowd to collect a prop guillotine that had been brought.

From Salon ● Nov. 14, 2025

“They don’t use the guillotine anymore,” Soheil says.

From "Internment" by Samira Ahmed

After drying during a series of slow corkscrews, the new magazine’s edges were chopped smooth by guillotines and emerged through an opening.

From New York Times ● Jun. 16, 2024

Even news of guillotines, massacres, and growing public hostility to religion did not deter the most hopeful Francophiles, who dismissed such accounts as exaggerations by British propagandists.

From Slate ● Oct. 24, 2022

“During downturns,” Stern says, “the financial guillotines hit hardest in regions where clusters are weakest.”

From Nature ● May 3, 2016

A reviewer for an English newspaper saw guillotines.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2015

Now, there are many forms of cutting machines, some of which are called "guillotines" for an obvious reason.

From A Book for All Readers An Aid to the Collection, Use, and Preservation of Books and the Formation of Public and Private Libraries by Ainsworth Rand Spofford

Because of this mediocre king, who clung so desperately to the fantasies of absolutism that he was later overthrown and guillotined by his own people, the American experiment with republican government was able to commence.

From Slate ● May 30, 2025

The last queen of France was guillotined in 1793 at the age of 37, along with her husband at the height of the French Revolution.

From BBC ● Nov. 14, 2024

The French have maintained a love-hate relationship with kings ever since they guillotined King Louis XVI in 1793.

From Washington Times ● Mar. 23, 2023

In the wake of these works, Büchner’s Danton, a drunk with a death wish who wallows in self-pity and ends up guillotined, is hardly captivating.

From New York Times ● Jan. 19, 2023

That was Rahel being Sydney Carton being Charles Darnay, as he stood on the steps, waiting to be guillotined, in the Classics Illustrated comic’s version of A Tale of Two Cities.

From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy

The “age of chivalry is gone,” Edmund Burke lamented after the guillotining of Marie Antoinette of France on Oct.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026

France likes to dream of revolution, ever re-enacting the popular uprising of 1789 that led to the guillotining of the king and queen and the abolition of the monarchy three years later.

From New York Times ● Mar. 24, 2023

Otherwise – as in the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda and the guillotining of Andrea and Maddalena in Giordano's Andrea Chénier – the pleasure is all in the anticipation.

From The Guardian ● Jan. 20, 2011

The guillotining of his father made Louis Philippe the Orleanist pretender to the throne.

From Time Magazine Archive

The prominent Adam's apple jutting over the edge of the guillotining double collar worked emotionally.

From The Dop Doctor by Richard Dehan


Vocabulary lists containing guillotine

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