Word.ws English Dictionary

give someone the chair

give someone the chair verb: to sentence a person to execution by means of the electric chair.

Verb

give someone the chair (third-person singular simple present gives someone the chair, present participle giving someone the chair, simple past gave someone the chair, past participle given someone the chair)

  1. (US, idiomatic) To sentence a person to execution by means of the electric chair.
    • Joseph O'Dell, convicted of a brutal rape and murder, was sentenced to death after a Virginia prosecutor told the jury that if they didn't give him the chair, he'd one day get out and be free to kill again.1997 July 7, Sidney Zion, “High Court Takes Low Road to Justice”, in New York Daily News, retrieved 03 Mar 2009

Forms of give someone the chair

third-person singular presentgives someone the chair
present participlegiving someone the chair
pastgave someone the chair
past participlegiven someone the chair

Questions about give someone the chair

What does give someone the chair mean?
Give someone the chair means to sentence a person to execution by means of the electric chair.
What part of speech is give someone the chair?
Give someone the chair is a verb.
What is the past tense of give someone the chair?
The past tense of give someone the chair is gave someone the chair.

Words near give someone the chair in the dictionary

  1. give someone the arm
  2. give someone the bag
  3. give someone the boot
  4. give someone the brush-off
  5. give someone the business
  6. give someone the chair
  7. give someone the cold shoulder
  8. give someone the creeps
  9. give someone the eye
  10. give someone the gears
  11. give someone the heave-ho

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: give someone the chair (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-give someone the chair.ogg.

Cite this entry: “give someone the chair.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/give_someone_the_chair. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.