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# beheading

«beheading» in Mova's school dictionary: **Cutting off someone's head as a punishment; an execution** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (a beheading, beheadings); verb, -ing form of behead (behead, beheads, beheaded, beheading)

### meaning for a pupil

1) Cutting off someone's head as a punishment; an execution. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/beheading/#m1)

2) (verb) Cutting off the head of a person or animal. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/beheading/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

In history lessons, Anne Boleyn and Charles I were beheaded; in Tudor England the axe was used, in the French Revolution the guillotine. In Alice in Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts shouts «Off with his head!» all the time, but the King quietly pardons everyone and nobody is actually beheaded — the Cheshire Cat even has no body to cut its head from. Beheading is a terrible, real punishment from history, not a joke in real life.

### examples

- Henry VIII ordered the beheading of two of his wives. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/beheading/#x1)
- «Off with her head!» shouted the Queen. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/beheading/#x2)
- The executioner said you can't behead a cat with no body. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/beheading/#x3)
- Charles I was beheaded in 1649. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/beheading/#x4)
- Nobody was really beheaded in Wonderland. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/beheading/#x5)
- Beheadings once took place in front of crowds at the Tower of London. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/beheading/#x6)

### note

Verb behead (be + head): beheaded, beheading. Similar: decapitate (formal), execution (any killing as a legal punishment).

### In the corpora

- [So the beheadings are only shouting.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/18-alice-the-mock-turtles-story-2/2/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «beheading» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/beheading/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.