give someone the chair
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English
Pronunciation
Audio (General Australian): (file)
Verb
give someone the chair (third-person singular simple present gives someone the chair, present participle giving someone the chair, simple past gave someone the chair, past participle given someone the chair)
- (chiefly US, idiomatic) To sentence a person to execution by means of the electric chair.
- 1997 July 7, Sidney Zion, “High Court Takes Low Road to Justice”, in New York Daily News, retrieved 3 Mar. 2009:
- Joseph O'Dell, convicted of a brutal rape and murder, was sentenced to death after a Virginia prosecutor told the jury that if they didn't give him the chair, he'd one day get out and be free to kill again.