subs. (old).—The gallows. [A corruption of Theodoric, the name of the public hangman at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries.] Now the name of an apparatus, resembling a crane. Also, used as a verb = to hang; apparently the earliest recorded sense. For synonyms, see NUBBING CHEAT.
1600. W. KEMP, Nine Daies Wonder, in Arber’s English Garner, vol. VIII., p. 37. One that … would pol his father, DERICK his dad! do anything, how ill soever, to please his apish humour.
1607. DEKKER, Jests to Make you Merie, in wks. (GROSART), ii., 318. For might I have beene her Judge, shee should haue had her due, and danst DERRIKS dance in a hempen halter.
1609. DEKKER, The Guls Horne-booke, chap. ii. The Neapolitan will (like DERICK, the hangman) embrace you with one arme, and rip your guts with the other.
