Pitchcapping

Part of speech: verb, noun

Definitions

1. The historical punishment of pouring boiling tar or pitch over a victim's head, often used by agrarian secret societies in Ireland
2. A cruel form of corporal punishment in which hot pitch was poured onto the scalp of a victim, sometimes causing severe burns
3. Torture carried out by pouring scalding pitch on someone's head, a method used in rural Irish violence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Etymology: Pitchcapping was a punishment used in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the word was built plainly from "pitch," the tarry substance, and "capping," from the verb "cap," meaning to cover the top of something. The compound describes its method: a victim's head was smeared with hot pitch, which was then covered over, so the pitch stuck to the hair and scalp. The word's sense is exactly what it looks like. Pitch was the sticky residue of boiling tar, and the practice used it as a means of torture, so the compound names the act directly rather than hiding it behind a metaphor. Few words in English are this literal, which is part of why it remains a clear example of how compounds record their own physical meaning.

Synonyms: tarring