Word.ws English Dictionary

carnifex

carnifex noun: an executioner.

Noun

carnifex (plural carnifexes or carnifices)

  1. (archaic, historical) An executioner.
    • “[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
    • ‘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

Forms of carnifex

pluralcarnifexes
pluralcarnifices

Origin of carnifex

From Latin carnifex (“butcher”).

Words formed from carnifex

Questions about carnifex

What does carnifex mean?
Carnifex means an executioner.
What part of speech is carnifex?
Carnifex is a noun.
What is the plural of carnifex?
The plural of carnifex is carnifexes.

Words near carnifex in the dictionary

  1. carnids
  2. carnie
  3. carnied
  4. carnies
  5. carniferous
  6. carnifex
  7. carnifexes
  8. carnification
  9. carnifications
  10. carnifices
  11. carnificial

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: carnifex (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Ralsei Worshipper-carnifex.wav.

Cite this entry: “carnifex.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/carnifex. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.