TORTURE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Torture

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/tˈɔrtʃər/ Listen

noun

Torture n.

1.

Extreme pain; anguish of body or mind; pang; agony; torment; as, torture of mind. "Ghastly spasm or racking torture."

2.

Especially, severe pain inflicted judicially, either as punishment for a crime, or for the purpose of extorting a confession from an accused person, as by water or fire, by the boot or thumbkin, or by the rack or wheel.

3.

The act or process of torturing. "Torture, which had always been deciared illegal, and which had recently been declared illegal even by the servile judges of that age, was inflicted for the last time in England in the month of May, 1640."

verb

torture v. t. (past & past part. tortured; pres. part. torturing)

1.

To put to torture; to pain extremely; to harass; to vex.

2.

To punish with torture; to put to the rack; as, to torture an accused person.

3.

To wrest from the proper meaning; to distort.

4.

To keep on the stretch, as a bow. (Obs.) "The bow tortureth the string."

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Etymology of 'Torture'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Torture" Quotes from Famous Books

... Wallop and Archbishop Loftus; but they were comforted by a great prize—an archbishop fell into their hands. Dr. Hurley refused to give information against others. Walsingham suggested that he should be put to the torture. To him Archbishop Loftus wrote with unction. 'Not finding that easy method of examination do any good, we made command to Mr. Waterhouse and Mr. Secretary Fenton to put him to the torture, such as your honour advised us, which was to toast his feet against the fire with hot boots.' ...

— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... under a deluge of high explosives, of shrapnel, of trench bombs and the deadly gas the five Khaki Boys and their comrades in arms suffered—physically and mentally. For a gas mask is both physical and mental torture. It is safe, and that is about the best that can be said for it. Merely to sit quietly with one on is a torture, and to work or fight in one is about the limit of ...

— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates

... with honor untarnished, or dead,—the fair dames and maidens of Carthage, who divested themselves of their beautiful tresses, to furnish bowstrings for their soldiers,—the Jewish women who preferred a death of torture, to the acknowledgment of the power of the tyrant over their country's rulers, and their faith—the women of the Pays-de Vaud, whose mountain fastnesses and churches were dearer to them than life—the thousands of ...

— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... who led them, there are moments in the quixotic career of St. Louis which haunt the fancy and compel our admiration: his bearing when, a captive of the Egyptian Sultan, he refused, even under threats of torture, to barter a single Christian fortress for his freedom; his lonely watch in Palestine, when for three years he patiently awaited the reinforcements that were never sent; his death-bed, when he prayed for strength to despise good fortune and not to fear adversity. Ideals may fade, but the ...

— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... attempt whatever being made to remedy this evil; on the contrary, their pitiless drivers urge them on by prodding the raw sores with sharpened sticks, and by belaboring them unceasingly with an instrument of torture in the shape of whips with six inches of ordinary trace-chain for a lash. As if the noble army of Persian donkey drivers were not satisfied with the refinement of physical cruelty to which they have attained, they add insult to injury by talking constantly to their donkeys while driving them along, ...

— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

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