Dictionary

carnifex en · NOUN

Pronunciation

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Etymology

From Latin carnifex (“butcher”).

Meanings

1. (archaic, historical) An executioner.
   • ‘Lesser places have no more than a carnifex, who takes life and performs such excruciations as the judicators there decree.’ 1980, Gene Wolfe, chapter XIII, in The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun; 1), New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 123:
   • Vorónezh: Ovid thrusts abruptly wide / the ice-locked shutters, discommodes his lyre / to Caesar's harbingers. Interrogation, / whatever is most feared. Truth's fatal vogue, / sad carnifex, self-styled of blood and wax. 2013, Geoffrey Hill, Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952–2012, Oxford University Press, →OCLC, page 535:
   • “[T]he carnifex, or executioner there, is brandishing his gulley ower near the King's face, seeing he is within reach of his weapon.” 1831, Walter Scott, Fortunes of Nigel:

Forms

Deriveds

distraction carnifex