Search the Dictionary

lity or polite attention to ladies; in a bed sense, attention or courtesy designed to win criminal favors from a female; freedom of principle or practice with respect to female virtue; intrigue.

A frame from which is suspended the rope with which criminals are executed by hanging, usually consisting of two upright posts and a crossbeam on the top; also, a like frame for suspending anything. So they hanged Haman on the gallows. Esther vii. 10. If I hang, I'll make a fat pair of gallows. Shak. O, there were deso…

The criminality and consequent exposure to punishment resulting from willful disobedience of law, or from morally wrong action; teh state of one who has broken a moral or political law; crime; criminality; offense against right. Satan had not answer, but stood struck With guilt of his own sin. Milton.…

Having incurred guilt; criminal; morally delinquent; wicked; chargeable with, or responsible for, something censurable; justly exposed to penalty; -- used with of, and usually followed by the crime, sometimes by the punishment. They answered and said, He is guilty of death. Matt. xxvi. 66. Nor he, nor you, were guilty…

To drive; to chase; -- with down, from, away, etc.; as, to hunt down a criminal; he was hunted from the parish.

In England, a sled or crate on which criminals were formerly drawn to the place of execution. Bacon.

One who is corrigible; especially, a hardened criminal; as, the perpetual imprisonment of incorrigibles.

unconcernedness; as, entire indifference to all that occurs. Indifference can not but be criminal, when it is conversant about objects which are so far from being of an indifferent nature, that they are highest importance. Addison.

Not felonious, malignant, or criminal. G. Eliot.

y ingratitude; to inflict punishment on an offender; to inflict the penalty of death on a criminal. What heart could wish, what hand inflict, this dire disgrace Drygen. The persecution and the pain That man inflicts on infero-ior kinds. Cowper.

e authorized public officer on behalt of the government. It differs from an indictment in criminal cases chiefly in not being based on the finding of a grand juri. See Indictment.

A body of men assembled under authority of law to inquire into any matterm civil or criminal, particularly any case of violent or sudden death; a jury, particularly a coroner's jury. The grand jury is sometimes called the grand inquest. See under Grand.

A joining of causes of action or defense in civil suits or criminal prosecutions.

, and their history was investigated by R. L. Dugdale as an example of the inheritance of criminal and immoral tendencies, disease, and pauperism. Sixty per cent of those traced showed, degeneracy, and they are estimated to have cost society $1,308,000 in 75 years.

gal power, right, or authority of a particular court to hear and determine causes, to try criminals, or to execute justice; judicial authority over a cause or class of causes; as, certain suits or actions, or the cognizance of certain crimes, are within the jurisdiction of a particular court, that is, within the limits…

A kind of whip for flogging criminals, formerly much used in Russia. The last is a tapering bundle of leather thongs twisted with wire and hardened, so that it mangles the flesh.

rton. -- Commercial law. See Law merchant (below). -- Common law. See under Common. -- Criminal law, that branch of jurisprudence which relates to crimes. -- Ecclesiastical law. See under Ecclesiastical. -- Grimm's law (Philol.), a statement (propounded by the German philologist Jacob Grimm) of certain regular cha…

One who disobeys the law; a criminal. -- Law"break`ing, n. & a.

to clear the way, and cause due respect to be paid to them, also to apprehend and punish criminals. Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power. Milton.

An instrument resembling the guillotine, formerly used in Scotland for beheading criminals. Wharton.