Potential racism of "auction block"

[Rick H Kennerly]

|o| FWIW, to the extent that I have thought about it at all, I have always
|o| associated the term outside of slave auctions with banging down a gavel
|o| on a block.


Block also has a long association with the condemned--death, slavery, or, in
the case of businesses, closing their doors, a kind of death of the owner's
dream.  I was searching back through Shakespeare and discovered several
references to the block (always in reference to beheading) but later 18 &
19th centuries references to the block as what the condemned stood on before
they were pushed off and hanged (before the advent of the trapdoor gallows,
I suppose) as well as the more familiar chopping block farmers used to kill
chickens.

rhk