guillotined

Guillotined refers to being executed by guillotine, a device designed for beheading. The guillotine consists of a tall frame through which a heavy, weighted blade slides vertically to sever the neck. The instrument is popularly named after Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a French physician who proposed a swift, supposedly humane method of capital punishment; he did not design the machine. The mechanism was developed by Antoine Louis, with the blade engineered by Tobias Schmidt, and was first used in 1792 during the French Revolution.

Operation typically involved placing the condemned under the blade, with the neck secured by a lunette or similar restraints to ensure a quick strike. The design aimed to provide a rapid, more egalitarian form of execution than previous methods, applying the same method to all condemned persons regardless of status. Over time, the guillotine became the standard means of carrying out capital punishment in France, remaining in use from 1792 until the death penalty was abolished in 1981. The last execution by guillotine in France occurred in 1977 (Hamida Djandoubi).

Beyond France, the guillotine influenced other jurisdictions that employed beheading devices, and it became a potent symbol associated with the French Revolution, state authority, and debates over capital punishment. In modern times, the guillotine is mainly encountered as a historical artifact, preserved in museums or studied as part of the history of punishment. The term guillotined remains used to describe someone who has been executed by this method.