gallows

Webb creates an implacable sense of doom that continually builds toward the last scene, with a deadly cadence and a final staircase suggesting the gallows.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026

Several officers told investigators that they used gallows humor as a way to deal with the stress of working long hours in a small, windowless basement office.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2026

A dozen minutes from the end, there was more singing from the Scottish crowd that we can only describe as gallows humour.

From BBC ● Jun. 14, 2026

Ralph Waldo Emerson declared that Brown would “make the gallows as glorious as the cross.”

From Slate ● Apr. 2, 2026

It is from this tree that Odin hanged himself in sacrifice, making the world-tree a gallows and himself the gallows god.

From "Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman

The comical little fellow wore an unbleached cotton shirt, and tattered pantaloons, with home-made suspenders or "gallowses."

From Queer Stories for Boys and Girls by Edward Eggleston

"I wear gallowses no more," he explained, lifting his waistcoat to show that his braces now encircled him as a belt, but even then she did not understand.

From Sentimental Tommy The Story of His Boyhood by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie

I mean, merely, that gallowses are fast disappearing, and that the people--le peuple you will understand--begin to accept money.

From Home as Found by James Fenimore Cooper

Tildy and Johnny were married, and Johnny's gallowses never creaked any more.

From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 12, No. 30, September, 1873 by Various

When knaves come to preferment, they rise as gallowses are raised in the Low Countries, one upon another's shoulders.

From Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series by Horatio Robert Forbes Brown