William Kemmler


Electrocute means, and only means, to put to death by means of a powerful electric current. It should not be used for a mere electric shock. This was a distinction I hadn’t full appreciated until reading Mind the Gaffe – something of a pedant’s handbook. Its first recorded use in English was on 7 June 1889 when New Jersey’s Trenton Times described how a prisoner had […]

Shocking vocabulary