Definition of "headsman" []

• A public executioner who beheads condemned prisoners. (noun)

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.

• "The coward and the tyrant call the headsman at any provocation, and fall to him the same, Inaglione had written."
• "The executioner who is called a headsman then walks forward approaching the chair from the rear."
• "'Henceforward you shall no longer be called the headsman, but the last of the judges.'"