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death sentence

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

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death sentence (plural death sentences)

  1. (law) A decree that someone be put to death as a punishment for a crime; a sentence of execution.
    • 2019 May 12, Alex McLevy, “Westeros faces a disastrous final battle on the penultimate Game of Thrones (newbies)”, in The A.V. Club[1], archived from the original on 15 May 2019:
      Tyrion’s tears contain the symbolic weight of his whole life; he wouldn’t be here if not for Jaime, as he admits, and his last hope is to give the man who risked everything to help him survive the same chance. Tyrion knows it’s a death sentence from Daenerys to betray her in this way, but he no longer cares.
    • 1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm [], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC:
      Comrades, here and now I pronounce the death sentence upon Snowball.
  2. (figurative) Anything that spells death.
    Having the Huntington's gene is a death sentence.

Derived terms

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Translations

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