Gibbeting-though it hits the ear like a word for happy playground chatter or perhaps, at worst, the cleaning of small game birds-is in fact a ghastly verb. To gibbet is to dip a corpse in tar and suspend it in a flat iron cage {the gibbet} in plain view of townsfolk while it rots and gets pecked apart by crows. A stroll through the square must have been a whole different plate of tamales back then.
( Mary Roach )
[ Stiff: The Curious Lives of ]
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