How to Use gallows in a Sentence

gallows

1 of 2 noun
  • He was sentenced to death on the gallows.
  • Having built its gallows, the play proceeds to hang someone on it.
    New York Times, 21 Apr. 2022
  • Outside, makeshift gallows stood, complete with sturdy wooden steps and the noose.
    Anchorage Daily News, 11 Jan. 2021
  • Chavoshi, 42, has managed to help save more than 50 people from the gallows.
    Los Angeles Times, 19 May 2022
  • When someone picks a wrong letter, another body part is drawn on the stick person hanging on the gallows.
    Melissa Mohr, The Christian Science Monitor, 31 Jan. 2022
  • Now reduced to a stump, the white oak tree that once served as a gallows sits in the cellar of a bar on Main Street.
    Julia Wick, Los Angeles Times, 15 Apr. 2021
  • Harris and Biden took their oaths of office in the same place that a crowd strung up a noose and gallows earlier this month.
    Katherine Doyle, Washington Examiner, 20 Jan. 2021
  • The hangman's gallows sitting out there on our National Mall.
    CNN, 27 July 2021
  • Others constructed a gallows with a noose outside the Capitol.
    New York Times, 21 Feb. 2021
  • Some demonstrators erected mock gallows, a key symbol of the demonstrations.
    Ghazi Balkiz, Ben Wedeman and Laura Smith-Spark, CNN, 9 Aug. 2020
  • There was only one gallows built in the shape of the triangle, and that, the duo determined, was the location of the Rip.
    Olivia Truffaut-Wong, refinery29.com, 30 Mar. 2021
  • That, coupled with the executioners in Alice’s dreams, point to the gallows.
    Olivia Truffaut-Wong, refinery29.com, 30 Mar. 2021
  • One post showed a Civil War-era picture of a gallows with more than two dozen nooses and hooded figures waiting to be hanged.
    Anchorage Daily News, 4 Jan. 2022
  • While the core five went to the gallows, other sentences were commuted to transportation to Australia, and one man was released.
    William Anthony Hay, WSJ, 17 June 2022
  • The gallows-humor joke in the wind industry this week was that Wall Street could soon become the biggest wind player in Texas.
    Russell Gold, WSJ, 4 Mar. 2021
  • Albert Parsons said, standing under a gallows on Hubbard Street.
    Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune, 13 May 2022
  • Insurrectionists littered the ground with debris and erected a gallows with a noose on the lawn outside the Capitol building.
    Livia Gershon, Smithsonian Magazine, 6 Jan. 2022
  • The gallows are not usually a place for nuance, but the play asks big questions about crime and punishment without shoving the audience toward an answer.
    Christopher Barnard, Vogue, 9 June 2022
  • Over several months, a group of young girls claiming to be possessed by the devil condemned a score of men and women to the gallows in one of history’s most infamous witch hunts.
    Gulnaz Khan, National Geographic, 31 Oct. 2020
  • Though beaten and robbed, Chung Sun was among the more fortunate; as many as 19 of his countrymen died in the riot, some of them lynched from makeshift gallows.
    Andrew R. Graybill, WSJ, 11 Aug. 2021
  • Also, my experience with people who have lived through very dark things do have [a] great sense of humor often, and very often in the middle of darkness, there's a kind of gallows' humor.
    Alamin Yohannes, EW.com, 7 Aug. 2020
  • Members of the mob erected gallows on the National Mall, overran security, and set off to hang the vice president.
    Steve Volk, Rolling Stone, 12 May 2021
  • Amplifying the ample racist symbols were numerous nooses and even a gallows on the hallowed grounds of the People's House.
    Star Tribune, 15 Jan. 2021
  • Some of the rioters were reportedly looking for Mike Pence, with plans to hang him from a makeshift gallows at the foot of Capitol Hill.
    Chris Cannon, The New Republic, 14 Jan. 2021
  • Richard Devonport has summoned Poirot to solve his brother’s murder and save Richard’s fiancée, Helen, from the gallows.
    Sophie Hannah, Star Tribune, 11 Sep. 2020
  • Even the street lights on Observatory Avenue are in synch with this theme, hanging over the road like gallows, suggesting punishment from some unseen tyrant.
    David Gilbert, The New Yorker, 17 Aug. 2020
  • These domestic terrorists erected makeshift gallows — complete with a noose — in the lawn of the US Capitol Building.
    Danielle Campoamor, refinery29.com, 11 Jan. 2021
  • The child laborers in the Beggar King’s sweatshop have been making Maladie Barbies that come complete with their own gallows.
    Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 9 May 2021
  • But as rioters called for his execution and erected gallows outside the Capitol building, Pence refused to leave the Capitol complex.
    Lindsay Chervinsky, The Conversation, 17 June 2022
  • The gallows were erected in the same place where several people were hanged more than 100 years ago by the then ruling Ottoman Empire for revolting against Istanbul.
    Ben Wedeman, CNN, 8 Aug. 2020

gallows

2 of 2 adjective
  • Journalists, of course, are no strangers to gallows humor and might once have laughed along.
    Barbara Starr, CNN, 21 May 2017
  • In the basement of the West Wing, gallows humor was a way to cope with the shock.
    Pat Cunnane, The New Yorker, 19 Jan. 2017
  • Thone tosses away in one of her character’s many gallows-humor jokes).
    Brendan Kiley, The Seattle Times, 5 May 2017
  • Some White House staffers have turned to impeachment gallows humor.
    James Hohmann, Washington Post, 18 May 2017
  • For many here, slow broadband connections are a source of frustration and an inspiration for gallows humor.
    Andrew McMillen, New York Times, 11 May 2017
  • However, behind this delightful French treat lies a dark past as Buttes Chaumont was once a former trash dump and gallows ground.
    Josh Lee, Vogue, 31 Aug. 2017
  • The movie’s sharp scares, gallows humor, and insidious intelligence are informed by the sensibility, and insistent paranoia, that lurks within the hearts of blacks who must navigate white spaces.
    Brandon Harris, The New Yorker, 4 Mar. 2017
  • Now, amid all the hand-wringing, anger and exasperation, the crisis is bolstering Brazil’s tradition of gallows humor, fueling a mix of satire and existential resignation.
    Simon Romero, New York Times, 26 May 2017
  • Lisa Larson-Walker/Slate Academics are keen observers of the absurd in their professional lives—or so their many ironic, often gallows-humor social media accounts suggest.
    Colleen Flaherty, Slate Magazine, 10 Feb. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'gallows.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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