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Torturer   /tˈɔrtʃərər/   Listen
Torturer

noun
1.
Someone who inflicts severe physical pain (usually for punishment or coercion).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Torturer" Quotes from Famous Books



... the people who shouted "Christ to the cross!" But we bind you not to our safety—no! Betray us to the crowd—impeach, calumniate, malign us if you will—we are above death, we should walk cheerfully to the den of the lion, or the rack of the torturer—we can trample down the darkness of the grave, and what is death to a criminal is eternity to ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... Englishman of the baser kind touched about the lowest depth ever reached by civilized man during the last century. What he was in Riverside London has been disclosed by Colquhoun, the Police Magistrate. Here he was not only a drunkard, a brawler, a torturer of dumb beasts, a wife-beater, a profligate—he was also, with his fellows, engaged every day, and all day long, in a vast systematic organized depredation. The people of the riverside were all, to a man, river pirates; by day and by night they stole from the ships. ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... of placating Antony. That was just when Nisbet was beginning to thunder at the gates of Agpur—or rather, a good way off them—so it appealed to him. Of course the flaw in the argument was that if he knew his business, his torturer might contrive to extract the answer to the question, and the secret, without killing me, but I had to treat that possibility as absolutely non-existent. Still, he found out the ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... commanded I become thy fere, * O shining like full moon when clearest clear! All beauty dost embrace, all eloquence; * Brighter than aught within our worldly sphere: Content am I my torturer thou be: * Haply shalt alms me with one lovely leer! Happy her death who dieth for thy love! * No good in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... Quasimodo had endured the torturer's whip with patience, but he rebelled against the stones, and struggled in his fetters till the old pillory- wheel creaked on its timbers. Then, as he could accomplish nothing by his struggles, his face became ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... you look a little bit pleased?" smiled the torturer from the window. "You sit there like a—an Indian before a cigar store. You've just ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... armed men into Trebonius's house, when that unhappy man saw the swords of the robbers before he heard what was the matter, the entrance of Dolabella, raging,—his ill omened voice, and infamous countenance,—the chains, the scourges, the rack, the armourer who was both torturer and executioner, all which they say that the unhappy Trebonius endured with great fortitude. A great praise, and in my opinion indeed the greatest of all, for it is the part of a wise man to resolve beforehand that whatever can happen ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... thrusting his hideous head to within an inch or two of that of the dying man, he glowered at him with his fierce and fiery eves. Then he began to whisper into the king's ear, who quivered at his words, as the victim quivers beneath the torturer's looks. ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... cried, "shamefully maltreated by yonder villain, is my father. Whoso thinks he has acted wrongly in forfeiting the life of his torturer shall answer to me. With my sword I shall teach him ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... relations of Ireland with England have been, for so many centuries, those of a captive with his jailer, those of a victim with his torturer." ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... that it is lack of imagination which makes men and women brutes. May it not be power of imagination? The interest of torturing is lessened, is almost lost, if we can not be the tortured as well as the torturer. ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... glances and stood aghast, but Samory, livid with rage, sprang from his divan and commenced to upbraid the aged seer for his words of warning. I was not, however, allowed to listen to the further discussion of the old man's prophecy, being hurried by two of the torturer's slaves back to my underground cell, where I remained alone for many hours awaiting Omar, who, I presumed, was being brought back to consciousness in another part of the great impregnable fortress, the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... necessity, had discovered too late the mistakes she had been involuntarily led into by her excessive love. Still, the worthy daughter of her mother, her heart ached at the thought of worrying Wenceslas; she loved her dear poet too much to become his torturer; and she could foresee the hour when beggary awaited her, her child, and ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... a blackamoor, friend, a child of Beelzebub abounding in blood, brother—being torturer, executioner and cook and notable in each several office. A man small of soul yet great of body, being nought but a poor, black heathen, as I say. And ashore yonder you shall hear our Christian messmates a-quarrelling over ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... bulkheads and walls, soft lights and warmth of a space-liner, get out in a small cramped space-suit, and space loses its mask of harmlessness and stands revealed as the bleak, unfeeling torturer it is. There is the loneliness, the sense of timelessness, the sensation of falling, and above all there is the "weightless" feeling from pressure-changes in man's blood-stream—changes sickening in effect and soon resulting in delirium. Nothing definite; no gravity; no "bottom," no "top"; merely ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore

... holding her fast, heedless of all the longing of her heart to escape. Then she knew that he, and only he, was the unknown power that kept her back from peace, forcing her onward in that dread circle, compelling her to live in torment. And in that moment she feared him as the victim fears the torturer, not asking for mercy, partly because she lacked the strength and partly because she knew—how hopelessly!—that she would ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... my foes? Why is my own sister become my persecutor? Why should she give me up to the torturer and the dungeon? Why are serpents and fiends my comrades? Why is there fire in my brain and heart; and why do you go free and enjoy liberty and life? Observed! What care you for observation? All ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... squawked, wailed, screamed with laughter, howled the loving petition in a dozen keys of mockery, while Hedrick writhed and Lolita clung. Enriched by a new and great experience, the torturer trotted on, leaving ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... in reply to every question she would confess nothing, we caused her to be taken by two officers and led from the prison to the torture chamber, where the torturer was in attendance; there, after cutting off her hair, he made her sit on a small stool, undressed her, pulled off her shoes, tied her hands behind her back, fastened them to a rope passed over a pulley bolted into the ceiling ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... most horrible agony that Jimmie had ever dreamed of. His voice rose to a shriek: "Wait! Wait! Listen!" The torturer would relax the pressure and say: "The names?" And when Jimmie did not give the names, he would press harder yet. Jimmie writhed convulsively, but the other two men held him as in a vice. He pleaded, he sobbed and moaned; but the walls of this dungeon had been made so that the ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... make of the moral standards of an eminent prelate of the Roman Church who can hold and express so appalling a theory? It is based on the moral standard of the Prussian officer, of the medieval torturer. The majority of clergymen have at length come to realise, tardily and reluctantly, that the man or woman who rejects the creeds they offer may quite possibly not believe in them. The practice of describing a refusal to assent to the doctrine ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe

... Mr. Milburgh between the time of his discovery lying bound and helpless and showing evidence that he had been in the hands of a Chinese torturer and the moment he left Sam Stay. He had read of the murder, and had been shocked, and, ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... at their general unpopularity, they seek refuge with the very person who at the same time assures them of their odium and alone believes it unjust. She rules that poor old goose, Lady Gramshawe, who feels that Lady Firebrace makes her life miserable, but is convinced that if she break with the torturer, she ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... Marquis sought again for words, and he glanced at his torturer timidly, like the hare on the ever-nearing hounds. Why did she pursue him, he asked, in this terrible way? Had she gone mad? What was he to say? He had not the courage to answer no to her face. Besides, if Violet would not have him, he might as well save the family estates. If Violet refused ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... of the band, would so detach it that it might be unwound from my person by means of my left hand. But how fearful, in that case, the proximity of the steel! The result of the slightest struggle how deadly! Was it likely, moreover, that the minions of the torturer had not foreseen and provided for this possibility! Was it probable that the bandage crossed my bosom in the track of the pendulum? Dreading to find my faint, and, as it seemed, in last hope frustrated, I so far ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... with your condition," the Earl of Argyll said harshly. "We have found means here to make men of sterner mold than thine speak the truth, and in the interests of the state we shall not hesitate to use them against you also. The torturer here hath instruments which would tear you limb from limb, and, young sir, these will not be spared unless that malapert tongue of thine gives us the ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... falsely so called," the world had come a long way indeed from the soothing treatment of the possessed by him who bore among the noblest of his titles that of "The Great Physician." The result was natural: the treatment of the insane fell more and more into the hands of the jailer, the torturer, and the executioner. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... any one tried to open the door from the outside. You are forever—Oh, alas, that the pain is intermittent, that the piercing agony sometimes ceases! That is the reason why it lasts so long! The tortured man imagines he is resting when the torturer merely pauses to get his breath. It is like a drowning man's catching his breath on the waves, when the current that has drawn him under spews him forth again only to seize him once more and draw him down. He has nothing but a double, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various



Words linked to "Torturer" :   oppressor, flogger, scourger, torture



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