send to the scaffold

Verb

send to the scaffold (third-person singular simple present sends to the scaffold, present participle sending to the scaffold, simple past and past participle sent to the scaffold)

1. To sentence to be hanged.
   • The unfortunate widow of Louis XVI. was the first who was sent to the scaffold by the sanguinary tribunal of the revolution.1872, William Russell, William Jones, From the peace of Paris in 1763 to the Treaty of Amiens in 1802
   • Three men were sent to the scaffold—the Brothers Stanbourn (although a great fight was put up by Richard Stanbourn's counsel) for the slaying of William Jones and (in the case of Joseph Stanbourn) of Arthur Marsh.1937, T. Arthur Plummer, The Bonfire Murder, page 348

   Synonyms:

   forhang, Guy Fawkes, hang, ketch, scrag, stretch, string up, truss, tuck up

2. To cause someone to be condemned to be hanged.
   • On the other hand, how could the peerage — which had been the support of the now subverted throne, and which, perhaps, had secretly shared its hopes and its delirium — how could it escape public disgrace, if, too obedient to popular malice, a malice which had been accumulating since 1815, it sent...1845, George Newenham Wright, Jules Janin, Eugène Louis Lami, France Illustrated
   • I understand, of course, why you are anxious to get this thing without disagreeable consequences to yourself. You regard it as one of the links in a chain that may some day send you to the scaffold.1896, Albert Ross, Linn Boyd Porter, His Foster Sister, page 97