death warrantnoun [ C ]
uk/ˈdeθ ˌwɒr.ənt/us/ˈdeθ ˌwɔːr.ənt/an official document that says that someone must be killed as a punishment
something that leads to someone's death or the complete destruction of someone or something:
According to the law of the gangs, to quit is to sign your own death warrant.
America must address those shared resentments or risk signing its death warrant as a superpower.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Death penalties
- behead
- burn
- capital punishment
- chair
- condemn
- condemn sb to (do) sth
- condemned
- execute
- execution
- executioner
- gallows
- garrotte
- hangman
- hung, drawn, and quartered idiom
- noose
- scaffold
- stake
- stone
- string
- string sb up
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Examples from literature
- A man would as soon sign his own death warrant as ask me for a dance.
- In the name of God, I implore you not to sign their death warrants.
- The President was never known to sign the death warrant of a Confederate soldier.
- The boy held the death warrants one by one in the flame of the lamp and burned them to ashes.
- The notice to quit is like a death warrant to the family.