garotte: [17] Garotte is widely used simply for ‘strangle’, but its strict application is to a former Spanish method of capital punishment by strangulation or breaking the neck, in which a metal collar was screwed increasingly tight. It got its name from Spanish garrote, which originally meant ‘cudgel’: in earlier, less sophisticated or more impromptu versions of the execution, a cudgel or stick was inserted into a band around the neck and twisted round and round so as to tighten the band. The immediate source of garrote was no doubt Old French garrot, from an earlier guaroc ‘club, stick, rod for turning’, whose form suggests a Celtic origin.
