Definition of "decapitate" [de•cap•i•tate]

• To cut off the head of; behead. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "There's an intriguing story in today's Telegraph about how the Tories plan to "decapitate" - that is, target and win the seats of - certain Labour ministers come the next election."
• "They were to give war the kind of precision that would lower civilian deaths to the vanishing point and, as the neocons of the Bush administration would claim in the next decade, free the U.S. military to "decapitate" any regime we loathed."
• "The Bush administration fanaticized about using shock and awe to "decapitate" the Iraqi regime, and then -- King Midas-like -- touching the country to make it prosperous, civil, and — most important for the Bush administration — compliant."