Decapitate

Definition: Decapitate

Decapitate

Verb

1. Cut the head of; "the French King was beheaded during the Revolution".

Date "decapitate" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1550. (references)

Note: Decapitate \De*cap"i*tate\, transitive verb. [imperative past participle Decapitated; present participle verb or noun Decapitating.]. (Websters 1913)

Synonym: Decapitate

Synonym: behead (v). (additional references)

Context	Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
Punishment	Execute; bring to the block, bring to the gallows; behead, decapitate, guillotine; decollate; hang, turn off, gibbet, bowstring, hang draw and quarter; shoot; decimate; burn; break on the wheel, crucify; empale, impale; flay; lynch; electrocute; gas, send to the gas chamber.
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

Crosswords: Decapitate

English words defined with "decapitate": Decapitating, Decollate ♦ Unhead. (references)

Specialty definitions using "decapitate": soul. (references)

Subject	Topic	Quote
Lexicography	Devil's Dictionary	SOUL, n. A spiritual entity concerning which there hath been brave disputation. Plato held that those souls which in a previous state of existence (antedating Athens) had obtained the clearest glimpses of eternal truth entered into the bodies of persons who became philosophers. Plato himself was a philosopher. The souls that had least contemplated divine truth animated the bodies of usurpers and despots. Dionysius I, who had threatened to decapitate the broad- browed philosopher, was a usurper and a despot. Plato, doubtless, was not the first to construct a system of philosophy that could be quoted against his enemies; certainly he was not the last. "Concerning the nature of the soul," saith the renowned author of Diversiones Sanctorum, "there hath been hardly more argument than that of its place in the body. Mine own belief is that the soul hath her seat in the abdomen -- in which faith we may discern and interpret a truth hitherto unintelligible, namely that the glutton is of all men most devout. He is said in the Scripture to 'make a god of his belly' -- why, then, should he not be pious, having ever his Deity with him to freshen his faith? Who so well as he can know the might and majesty that he shrines? Truly and soberly, the soul and the stomach are one Divine Entity; and such was the belief of Promasius, who nevertheless erred in denying it immortality. He had observed that its visible and material substance failed and decayed with the rest of the body after death, but of its immaterial essence he knew nothing. This is what we call the Appetite, and it survives the wreck and reek of mortality, to be rewarded or punished in another world, according to what it hath demanded in the flesh. The Appetite whose coarse clamoring was for the unwholesome viands of the general market and the public refectory shall be cast into eternal famine, whilst that which firmly through civilly insisted on ortolans, caviare, terrapin, anchovies, pates de foie gras and all such Christian comestibles shall flesh its spiritual tooth in the souls of them forever and ever, and wreak its divine thirst upon the immortal parts of the rarest and richest wines ever quaffed here below. Such is my religious faith, though I grieve to confess that neither His Holiness the Pope nor His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom I equally and profoundly revere) will assent to its dissemination."
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

"Decapitate" is generally used as a lexical verb (infinitive) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Decapitate" is used about 10 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Lexical Verb (infinitive)	100%	10	111,207

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Language		Translations for "decapitate"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Albanian		i pres kokën (behead, decollate, head). (various references)

Arabic		‏قطع الرأس (behead, decapitation, decollate), ‏ضرب العنق (decapitation). (various references)

Bulgarian		обезглавявам (behead, decollate). (various references)

Chinese		杀头 (Decapitated, Decapitating, Decapitation). (various references)

Czech		utnout hlavu, stít (behead). (various references)

Dutch		onthoofden (behead, decapitation, decollation, derotomy), het hoofd afslaan (behead). (various references)

Esperanto		senkapigi (behead). (various references)

Faeroese		hálshøgga (behead), avhøvda (behead). (various references)

Farsi		گردن زدن (Behead, Decollate), سرازتن جداکردن . (various references)

French		décapiter. (various references)

German		köpfen (behead, crack, head, head in, poll, tipping, to decapitate, topping), enthaupten (behead). (various references)

Greek		αποκεφαλίζω (behead, guillotine). (various references)

Hebrew		לערוף ראש (behead, guillotine). (various references)

Hungarian		lenyakaz (behead, decollate, guillotine, neck, to decapitate, to guillotine), lefejez (behead, obtruncate, to behead, to decapitate). (various references)

Indonesian		memenggal kepala (behead). (various references)

Italian		decapitare (behead, decollate). (various references)

Japanese Kanji		刎 . (various references)

Japanese Katakana		ふ�" (droppings, excrement, minute). (various references)

Korean		해� 하십시�". (various references)

Manx		jee-chionaghey (behead, decapitation), giarrey y kione jeh (behead). (various references)

Pig Latin		ecapitateday.(various references)

Portuguese		degolar (behead, decollate, jugulate, sticking, to stick), decapitar (behead, decollate, jugulate, obtrusion). (various references)

Romanian		decapita (behead, decollate). (various references)

Russian		обезглавливать (behead, decollate). (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		odseći glavu (behead). (various references)

Spanish		cortar (ax, axe, bar, behead, block off, Bob, break, break in, chop, clip, comminute, crop, cut, cut across, cut away, cut down, cut in, cut off, cut out, cut up, detruncate, disbranch, excise, exscind, fell, hack, incise, intersect, joint, lop, lop away, lop off, lumber, mow, Nick, nip, open, pare, pick, pluck, prune, sever, shear, shear off, shear through, shut off, slice, slit, snick, strike off, tear off, to cut, to hit, trim away, trim off, turn off, turn out, Whittle). (various references)

Swedish		halshugga (behead, decollate). (various references)

Turkish		işten çıkarmak (discharge, dismiss, fire, give smb. the gate, lay off, turn off), başını kesmek. (various references)

Ukranian		відтинати голову (decollate), обезголовлювати (decollate), змінювати керівництво урядових установ. (various references)

Welsh		torfynyglu (behead, break neck of). (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

Language	Period	Translations
Latin	500 BCE-Modern	carnificare, de-. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

Derivations
	Words beginning with "decapitate": decapitated, decapitates. (additional references)
Misspellings
	"Decapitate" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: decapeptide, disabitata. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

# of Phoneme Matches	Pronunciation	Word(s) rhyming with "decapitate" (pronounced dēka"putā't)
5	-p u t ā' t	precipitate.
4	-u t ā' t	acetate, agitate, amputate, annotate, cogitate, debilitate, facilitate, gravitate, hesitate, imitate, incapacitate, irritate, levitate, meditate, militate, necessitate, premeditate, rehabilitate, resuscitate, vegetate.
3	-t ā' t	devastate, downstate, mutate, overstate, potentate, prostate, punctate, rotate, tristate, understate.
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits.

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-a-c-d-e-e-i-p-t-t"
	-2 letters: acetated, apatetic, capitate.
	-3 letters: acetate, apatite, dictate, pectate.
	-4 letters: acedia, apiece, capita, catted, cattie, deceit, depict, detect, ideate, patted, pattee, pattie, peaced, pedate, petite, petted, pieced, pitted, tapeta, teated, tipcat.
	-5 letters: aceta, acted, adapt, adept, aecia, apace, attic, cadet, caped, cited, deice, dicta, edict, epact, etape, paced, pated, peace, petit, petti, piece, pieta, tacet, tacit, taped, tecta, tepid.
	Words containing the letters "a-a-c-d-e-e-i-p-t-t"
	+1 letter: decapitated, decapitates.
	+3 letters: recapitulated.
	+4 letters: pancreatitides.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.