Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An official who had charge of the rack, in the days when that instrument of torture was used as a punishment or as a means of extorting confession.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • He had faced all this in his mind again and again, but it was a different thing to have the horror within arm's length; old phrases he had heard of the torture rang in his mind -- a boast of Norton's, the rackmaster, who had racked Brian, and which had been repeated from mouth to mouth -- that he had "made Brian a foot longer than God made him"; words of James

    By What Authority? Robert Hugh Benson 1892

Comments

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  • Confess!

    November 24, 2010