lingchi
Syllables: ling·chi
lingchi noun: a form of execution used in China from roughly 900 to 1905 C.E., the "death by a thousand cuts", in which the condemned was killed by methodical removal of body parts with a knife.
Noun
lingchi (uncountable)
- A form of execution used in China from roughly 900 to 1905 C.E., the "death by a thousand cuts", in which the condemned was killed by methodical removal of body parts with a knife.
- The face of the dying man in the lingchi video monotonously evokes Maria Falconetti in Carl Theodor Dreyer ’s 1928 “Passion of Joan of Arc.”2007 July 25, Roberta Smith, “Figures Moving as if in a Trance Across an Isolated, Lawless Island”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 26 Nov 2022
- Synonyms:
- slow slicing
Synonyms of lingchi
Forms of lingchi
| alternative form | ling chi |
|---|---|
| alternative form | ling-ch'ih |
| alternative form (obsolete) | leng t'che |
| alternative form (obsolete) | ling-chy |
Origin of lingchi
Borrowed from Mandarin 凌遲 (língchí).
Questions about lingchi
- What does lingchi mean?
- Lingchi means a form of execution used in China from roughly 900 to 1905 C.E., the "death by a thousand cuts", in which the condemned was killed by methodical removal of body parts with a knife.
- What part of speech is lingchi?
- Lingchi is a noun.
Words near lingchi in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: lingchi (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:
Cite this entry: “lingchi.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lingchi. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.