Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
electric chair \e*lec"tric chair`\, n. a device used for execution of criminals, consisting of a specially designed chair in which the victim is killed by passing a large current of electricity through the body. This method of killing is called electrocution.
Syn: the chair, death chair, hot seat. [PJC]
Wiktionary
n. 1 A device used for performing execution by electrocution. 2 An electrically powered wheelchair
WordNet
n. an instrument of execution by electrocution; resembles a chair; "the murderer was sentenced to die in the chair" [syn: chair, death chair, hot seat]
Wikipedia
Execution by electrocution, usually performed using an electric chair, is an execution method originating in the United States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes placed on the head and leg. This execution method, conceived in 1881 by a Buffalo, New York dentist named Alfred P. Southwick, was developed throughout the 1880s as a humane alternative to hanging and first used in 1890. This execution method has been used in the United States and, for a period of several decades, in the Philippines (its first use there in 1924, last in 1976).
Historically, once the condemned person was attached to the chair, various cycles (differing in voltage and duration) of alternating current would be passed through the individual's body, in order to cause fatal damage to the internal organs (including the brain). The first more powerful jolt of electric current was designed to pass through the head and cause immediate unconsciousness and brain death. The second less powerful jolt was designed to cause fatal damage to the vital organs. Death may also be caused by electrical overstimulation of the heart.
Although the electric chair has long been a symbol of the death penalty in the United States, its use is in decline due to the rise of lethal injection, which is widely believed to be a more humane method of execution. Although some states still maintain electrocution as a method of execution, today it is only maintained as a secondary method that may be chosen over lethal injection at the request of the prisoner, except in Tennessee where it may be used if the drugs for lethal injection are not available, without input from the prisoner. As of 2014, electrocution is an optional form of execution in Alabama, Florida, South Carolina and Virginia. They allow the prisoner to choose lethal injection as an alternative method. In the state of Kentucky the electric chair has been retired except for those whose capital crimes were committed prior to March 31, 1998 and who choose electrocution; inmates who do not choose electrocution and inmates who committed their crimes after the designated date are executed by lethal injection. In the state of Tennessee the electric chair is available for use if lethal injection drugs are unavailable, or otherwise if the inmate so chooses if their capital crime was committed before 1999. The electric chair is an alternate form of execution approved for potential use in Arkansas and Oklahoma if other forms of execution are found unconstitutional in the state at the time of execution. On February 8, 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court determined that execution by electric chair was a "cruel and unusual punishment" under the state's constitution. This brought executions of this type to an end in Nebraska, the only remaining state to retain electrocution as its sole method of execution.
Electric Chair is a compilation album by Australian rock group Hoodoo Gurus. It was originally released as a 2-CD set with Armchair Gurus, the album features seventeen Hoodoo Gurus' rock/party tracks whilst Armchair Gurus contains seventeen ballads and slower songs. The double set contains two tracks not previously found on Gurus' albums and five totally new songs including the single "The Real Deal". The albums were also released as separate albums. The album was certified gold.
"She" is an uncredited track that starts 36 seconds after the end of "Form A Circle".
Electric chair or similar can mean:
- Electric chair, a chair that a condemned prisoner is strapped in and electrocuted
- Organizations for the disabled sometimes use "electric chair" to mean an electric-powered wheelchair
- Professional wrestling holds#Electric chair, a wrestling hold
Usage examples of "electric chair".
The walls were lined with gaudy but antiquated medical apparatus: a sedative-bath machine, an electric chair for administering shock treatment to schizophrenics, an EKG analyzer for tracing psychotic patterns, old optical and electronic microscopes.
Why, damn you, all the good there ever will be in that electric chair will have been stolen from me.
Hers was no less an agony than that of the men in the curtained cells, since she had learned that when the lights grow dim at dawn at Sing Sing, it means that the electric power has been borrowed for just that little while to send a body straining against the straps of the electric chair, snuffing out the life of a man.
I don't know him, but it seems to me that he has a heartless sort of innocence, the sort of innocence that would allow a man to invent and build an electric chair -- as an act of good citizenship.
It wasn't even that million to one chance, but it was like what Marie had said, sitting in the electric chair, and the man pulling the switch, and still hoping.
Jimmie the Cob, waiting for this oh-so-very-sentient society to tie him down with straps in an electric chair and give him an electric shock therapy which will cause him to cease and desist forever, examined for his causes, will pour forth justifications to explain his life and conduct.
Since the night Mort Simmons died in the electric chair, it clung like monstrous fungi at the end of every cavern through which she fled.
She saw visions of arrest and trial, of the terrible electric chair with herself in it, bound, and of the giving of the fatal signal for turning on the current.