decapitate

Verb

decapitate (third-person singular simple present decapitates, present participle decapitating, simple past and past participle decapitated)

1. (transitive, literal) To remove the head of.
   • One machine in which Mr. Taylor takes special pride is a salmon canner, which engulfs a whole salmon, decapitates and decaudates it, skins it, blows out its viscera, cuts it into pieces, deposits them in the can, sterilizes them […]1937, Technology Review, volume 40, page 100
   • The hippie wasn't wearing any shoes. January in Boston and he's in sandals, standing there screaming, “Look what she did! Look what the crazy fucking bitch did!” --like it was my pleasure to risk decapitating myself by slamming through the hippiemobile.1993, William S. Burroughs, Esquire, volume 120, page 78
2. (figuratively, transitive) To oust or destroy the leadership or ruling body of (a government etc.).
   • The Russian goal at the start of the invasion had been to kill or capture Zelensky and decapitate his government.2022 December 7, Simon Shuster, “2022 Person of the Year: Volodymyr Zelensky”, in Time, archived from the original on 04 Jan 2023
   • The assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was the culmination of decades of painstaking intelligence gathering by Israeli secret services, […] which culminated in a single concentrated burst of lethal violence to decapitate the Iranian regime, according to experts, veteran...2026 March 1, Jason Burke, “How Israeli sleight and US might led to the assassination of Ali Khamenei”, in The Guardian, →ISSN