Empaling

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. The act of piercing or impaling with a sharp object; the process of fixing something on a pointed stake; a method of execution or torture involving thrusting a stake through the body
2. The action of piercing through with a pointed implement; securing or mounting on a spike; a brutal form of punishment by impalement
3. The process of driving a sharp point through an object or person; attaching or displaying by skewing on a spike; a historical technique of execution involving impaling on a stake

Etymology: "Empaling" is the present participle and gerund of "empale", which is formed from the prefix "em-" and the noun "pale". The "pale" is the older sense of a pointed stake or stake-fence, a word that came into English from Latin "palus", meaning a stake. Driving a sharpened post into something, or onto something, is what gives the verb its core sense of fixing a thing on a point. The prefix "em-" (a variant of "en-") is the same device that turns a noun into a verb meaning "to put into or onto" the thing named, as in "embed" or "enclose". So "to empale" literally means to put someone or something upon a stake. That physical act of impaling is why the word carries both the mundane sense of mounting something on a spike and the grim sense of execution by impalement.

Synonyms: piercing, impaling, skewering