Q: "gallows" also including a platform?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Some speakers may have distinguished between "the gallows" in general and
"the gallows tree." The latter appears in various ballads.

Proving nothing, of course, since those are poetry.

JL

On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 10:03 AM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Q:  "gallows" also including a platform?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The locution "mount the gallows" gets some half a million raw Google hits.
>
> --Charlie
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Amy
> West [medievalist at W-STS.COM]
> Sent: Monday, January 07, 2013 9:04 AM
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On 1/7/13 12:00 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> > Date:    Sun, 6 Jan 2013 21:07:37 -0500
> > From:    "Joel S. Berson"<Berson at ATT.NET>
> > Subject: Q:  "gallows" also including a platform?
> >
> > If someone was to be punished by being "set upon the gallows with a
> > rope around their neck" (as in colonial laws and verdicts), doesn't
> > that mean that there are usages of "gallows" that necessarily include
> > a platform?  The OED merely says the "apparatus" "usually consist[s]
> > of two uprights and a cross-piece".  I know there were hangings where
> > the executioner simply pulled up on a rope, but there were also
> > executions where a "platform" (such as a trap door) was lowered.
> >
> > Joel
> I'm not an expert, but I've heard talks on medieval and Renaissance
> executions, and the period illustrations showed a variety of gallows
> forms: there's the raising, there's standing on something kicked out
> underneath, and then there's the trapdoor. *That* last one  is much
> later, I believe, when they started using the hangman's slipknot in the
> 19th? century. Earlier hangings were death by strangulation, not death
> by snapping the neck.  The OED def, like a good def., is just
> delineating the minimum, allowing for additional elements, because the
> structure does vary by time and place.
>
> ---Amy West
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org