Lyncher

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who participates in the illegal killing of someone by a mob, usually without a trial, as an act of supposed justice
2. Someone who joins a crowd in executing a suspected wrongdoer outside the law, typically by hanging
3. One of the members of a mob that seizes and kills a person extrajudicially, often as a form of racial or social terror

Etymology: Lynching takes its name from a man who may never have existed as a historical figure, or at least not as the story is told. The surname "Lynch" appears in English and Irish records, and the verb "lynch" is usually traced to Charles Lynch, a Virginia planter and militia leader in the American Revolution, who is said to have ordered extrajudicial punishments against Loyalists. The story is widely repeated, but the evidence that he was the source of the verb is thin, and the earlier root "lynch" is attested independently as a surname. The verb itself is a clear case of conversion from a name. Its older base is Old English "hlinc", meaning a ridge or a rise of land, which survives in place names such as "Lynch" in the British Isles. Once "lynch" became a verb meaning to inflict summary punishment outside legal process, English added the agent suffix "-er" to name the person doing the act. "Lyncher" is therefore a verb-plus-suffix formation: "lynch" with the ending "-er" added to mark someone who lynches.

Synonyms: vigilante, lyncher mob member