garrote

/ɡəˈɹɒt/

garrote noun: an iron collar formerly used in Spain to execute people by strangulation.

Image: Gustave Doré, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

garrote (plural garrotes)

(historical) An iron collar formerly used in Spain to execute people by strangulation.
- I have twenty times done that which by Busnée law should have brought me to the filimicha (gallows), yet my neck has never yet been squeezed by the cold garrote.1843, George Borrow, The Bible in Spain, London: Cassell and Company, Ltd.
- […] promising that, by so doing, the painful death to which he had been sentenced should be commuted for the milder form of the garrote,—a mode of punishment by strangulation, used for criminals in Spain.1847, William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru
Something, especially a cord or wire, used for strangulation.
- The mob boss was known for having his enemies executed with a garrote of piano wire.

garrote (third-person singular simple present garrotes, present participle garroting, simple past and past participle garroted)

(transitive) To execute by strangulation, to kill using a garrote.
- I have not a sou, and for want of a few crowns I shall be garroted within a month unless I can escape, though, as I told you before, I have done nothing, a mere bagatelle; but the worst crimes in Spain are poverty and misery.1843, George Borrow, The Bible in Spain, London: Cassell and Company, Ltd.
(transitive) To suddenly render insensible by semi-strangulation, and then to rob.
- “And then Lee may have fallen into the river, and Norton been garrotted. It is certainly a formidable indictment that you have against Bellingham; but if you were to place it before a police magistrate, he would simply laugh in your face.”1894, Arthur Conan Doyle, “Lot No. 249”, in Round the Red Lamp […]
- About this time the police reports were full of cases of garrotting. The victim was seized from behind, one man gagged or burked him, while another picked his pocket.1905, Henry J. Coke, Tracks of a Rolling Stone

শ্বাসরোধ করে হত্যা করা

The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and leadballs do their work, / The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,1892, Walt Whitman, “To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire”, in Leaves of Grass […], Philadelphia, Pa.: David McKay, publisher, […], →OCLC...
They gave rebels the "usual four shots in the back" or the garrote—an iron collar tightened around the victim's neck with a screw until he was strangled to death.2004, Chris Wallace, Character: Profiles in Presidential Courage, →ISBN:

Noun
plural	garrotes
alternative UK	garotte
alternative UK	garrotte
Verb
third-person singular present	garrotes
present participle	garroting
past participle	garroted
past	garroted

From Spanish garrote. Doublet of garrot.

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

What does garrote mean?: Garrote means an iron collar formerly used in Spain to execute people by strangulation.
What is garrote in Bengali?: Garrote in Bengali is শ্বাসরোধ করে হত্যা করা. See Garrote meaning in Bengali.
How do you use garrote in a sentence?: The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and leadballs do their work, / The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,
What part of speech is garrote?: Garrote can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce garrote?: Garrote is pronounced /ɡəˈɹɒt/.
What is the plural of garrote?: The plural of garrote is garrotes.

Adapted from Wiktionary: garrote (page history and authors); garrote (Bengali Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-garrote.ogg.

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