death warrantn.

1692 N. Luttrell Diary in Brief Hist. Relation State Affairs (1857) II. 644 The dead warrant is come to the sheriffe of London for the execution of 13 of the late condemned criminally.

1735 Lives Most Remarkable Criminals I. 5 The Death Warrant came down and she utterly despaired of Life.

1757 R. Symmer Let. 4 Mar. in H. Ellis Orig. Lett. Eng. Hist. (1827) 2nd Ser. IV. 398 The Lords of the Admiralty..signed the Dead Warrant appointing him to be shot.

1782 E. Pendleton Let. 29 Oct. in Lett. & Papers (1967) II. 416 Three men..were convicted of Treason in the General Court at their June Sessions, and a Rule made for their Execution on a certain day, as is the Practice, instead of a death Warrant used under the Regal Government.

1829 G. P. R. James Richelieu I. xi. 265 The attendant whom he had despatched with the death-warrants.

1886 C. Bullock Queen's Resolve 51/1 Before Parliament relieved her of the necessity, she [sc. Queen Victoria] had to sign the death-warrant of all prisoners sentenced to suffer capital punishment.

1920 A. Livingston & J. Padin tr. V. B. Ibáñez Mexico in Revol. vii. 166 The Roman decadence, when authorities used to write jokes and puns around their signatures to death warrants.

1959 W. S. Burroughs Naked Lunch 255 The sheriff in black vest types out a death warrant.

2003 National Catholic Reporter (Nexis) 4 July 15 From the governor who signs the death warrant down to the technicians who insert the poison-bearing needles.

1721 N. Henchman Holy & Useful Life J. Burrill 5 All his humane Glory could not protect and shield him when God sent his Death Warrant.

1777 London Mag. May 242/2 The old Whigs, when they joined the Leicester House Junto,..little imagined that they were signing their own death-warrant,..that they were in fact paving the way to their own ruin.

1790 E. Pendleton Let. 18 Sept. in Lett. & Papers (1967) II. 573 Was the cruel law..the death Warrant to Our hopes?

1814 W. Scott Life of Swift in J. Swift Wks. I. v. 253 It was her death-warrant. She sunk at once under the disappointment.

1832 Fraser's Mag. Feb. 73/2 The present peers..are willing, good easy simpletons! to sign their own death-warrant.

1874 J. Morley On Compromise 178 An institution whose death-warrant you pretend to be signing.

1921 D. D. Sheehan Ireland since Parnell ix. 100 It was inconceivable that the landlords should have, in solemn treaty, signed their own death warrant as territorialists.

1985 Time 4 Feb. 85 Sometimes..movies can elude their death warrants and flourish into cult objects through doggedness and word of mouth.

2006 Prospect Aug. 21/1 We could afford a fully British Trident replacement with a 5 per cent cut to the benefit and health budgets, but that would be as much of a political death warrant as unilateral disarmament.