Also 6 -or, 7 -er. [f. prec. sb.: cf. F. torturer (1480 in Hatz.-Darm.).]
1. trans. To inflict torture upon, subject to torture; spec. to subject to judicial torture; put to the torture. Also absol.
1593. Shaks., 2 Hen. VI., III. i. 376. Say he be taken, rackt, and tortured; I know, no paine they can inflict vpon him, Will make him say, I mou’d him to those Armes.
1594. First Pt. Contention (1843), 35. A murtherer or foule felonous theere … I tortord above the rate of common law.
1611. Bible, Heb. xi. 35. Others were tortured [16th c. versions racked], not accepting deliuerance.
1632. Lithgow, Trav., X. 480. Hee thought hee saw a man Torturing [i.e., being tortured].
1651. Hobbes, Leviath., I. xiv. 70. What is in that case confessed, tendeth to the ease of him that is Tortured.
1847. Mrs. A. Kerr, trans. Ranke’s Hist. Servia, x. 203. Shall I live to see thee slowly tortured to death by the Turks?
1896. ‘M. Field,’ Attila, II. 48. You will not torture? Placidia. We use that to extort confession, not As punishment.
2. To inflict severe pain or suffering upon; to torment; to distress or afflict grievously; also, to exercise the mind severely, to puzzle or perplex greatly. Also absol. to cause extreme pain.
1588. Shaks., L. L. L., V. ii. 60. That same Berowne Ile torture ere I goe.
1611. Speed, Hist. Gt. Brit., IX. xvi. (1623), 842. To consider how Writers torter us with the diuersities of reports.
1715–20. Pope, Iliad, XI. 985. The closing flesh … ceas’d to glow, The wound to torture, and the blood to flow.
1769. Junius Lett., xxix. (1797), I. 203. When the mind is tortured, it is not at the command of any outward power. It is the sense of guilt which constitutes the punishment, and creates that torture.
1849. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., vi. II. 67. Jeffreys was … tortured by a cruel internal malady. Ibid. (1855), xii. III. 167. It was rumoured … that he was tortured by painful emotions.
3. fig. a. To act upon violently in some way, so as to strain, twist, wrench, distort, pull or knock about, etc.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 137. The Bow tortureth the String continually, and thereby holdeth it in a Continuall Trepidation.
1743. Davidson, Æneid, VII. 198. A top whirling under the twisted lash, which boys … exercise and torture in a large circuit.
1822. Shelley, To Jane—the Recollection. Pines … Tortured by storms to shapes as rude As serpents interlaced.
186[?]. B. Harte, My Other Self, in Fiddletown, etc. (1873), 720. I stood at the glass in the desperate attempt to torture my hair after the fashion of young Wobbles.
b. To ‘twist’ (language, etc.) from the proper or natural meaning or form; to distort, pervert.
1648. Jenkyn, Blind Guide, i. 8. To torture Scripture for the defending of his errors.
1682. Dryden, Mac Fl., 208. There thou mayst … torture one poor word ten thousand ways.
1803. Visct. Strangford, Camoens’ Poems, Notes (1810), 127. It is surprising that this idea has not been more ramified and tortured by the English metaphysical poets of that school.
1869. Baldw. Brown, Chr. Policy Life (1880), 281. There might be a sentence here and there which might be tortured to bear that meaning.
4. To extract by torture; to extort. rare.
1687. trans. Sallust’s Wks. (1692), 29. They … by all manner of extortions hale and torture money to themselves.
1818. Keats, Endym., III. 256. Like a wretch from whom the rack Tortures hot breath, and speech of agony.
