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sbeam 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 desolation of gaolers and gallowses Shak.

One who has narrowly escaped the gallows for his crimes. [Colloq.] Dickens.

A gallows. [Archaic] Spenser.

behaved. [Obs.] Till she be better conversationed, . . . I'll keep As far from her as the gallows. Beau. & Fl.

A door or platform opening downward; a trap door; that part of the gallows on which a culprit stands when he is to be hanged; hence, the gallows itself.

Gallows. [Obs.] Chaucer.

A kind of gallows; an upright post with an arm projecting from the top, on which, formerly, malefactors were hanged in chains, and their bodies allowed to remain asa warning.

A base, degraded person; a sneak; a gallows bird.

of, or attachment to, something else. Shak. That little limb of the devil has cheated the gallows. Sir W. Scott.

A flatterer; a deceiver; a cozener. [Obs.] Chaucer. To a fair pair of gallows, there to end their lives with shame, as a number of such other losengers had done. Holinshed.

Of or pertaining to the gallows, or to execution. [R.] Carlyle.

Hanged on a gallows. [R.]

marked with awe and wonder that the beasts which were to drag him [Abraham Holmes] to the gallows became restive, and went back. Macaulay.

A cross or gallows; as Tyburn tree. [Jesus] whom they slew and hanged on a tree. Acts x. 39.

A fall off the ladder at the gallows; a hanging; -- so called from the practice of causing the criminal to stand on a ladder which was turned over, so throwing him off, when the signal was given. [Obs.]

omson. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Burke. The shattered tower which now forms a vista from his window. Sir W. Scott.

] and what for lore. Chaucer. Thus, what with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows, and what with poverty, I am custom shrunk. Shak. The year before he had so used the matter that what by force, what by policy, he had taken from the Christians above thirty small castles. Knolles.