Noun: carnifex
| Singular | carnifex |
| Plural | carnifexes; carnifices |
Sample Sentences
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“[T]he carnifex, or executioner there, is brandishing his gulley ower near the King's face, seeing he is within reach of his weapon.” [1831, Walter Scott, Fortunes of Nigel:]
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‘Lesser places have no more than a carnifex, who takes life and performs such excruciations as the judicators there decree.’ [1980, Gene Wolfe, chapter XIII, in The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun; 1), New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 123:]
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Vorónezh: Ovid thrusts abruptly wide / the ice-locked shutters, discommodes his lyre / to Caesar's harbingers. Interrogation, / whatever is most feared. Truth's fatal vogue, / sad carnifex, self-styled of blood and wax. [2013, Geoffrey Hill, Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952–2012, Oxford University Press, →OCLC, page 535:]
Nouns inflected like carnifex
solar apex,
vile vortex,
subindex,
cosimplex,
striate cortex,
heat index,
Articulation Index,
cerebellar cortex,
demodex,
tab index,
body mass index,
juxtallocortex,
misery index,
hypersimplex,
paracortex,
orbital index,
card index,
narthex,
subcortex,
iodine index, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Latin carnifex (“butcher”). See: Latin Nouns '
carnifex'.