gallows: [13] Gallows was probably borrowed from Old Norse gálgi (the related Old English galga does not seem to have survived into the Middle English period). Both go back to a prehistoric Germanic *galgon ‘pole’, whose descendants, which also include Old High German galgo and Gothic galga, were often used for the ‘cross on which Christ was crucified’. The plurality of modern English gallows presumably comes from the fact that technically a gallows consists of two upright poles with a cross-piece in between (as opposed to a gibbet, which has a single upright).
