torture – English noun declension

English noun forms of torture

Noun: torture
Singulartorture
Pluraltortures

Sample Sentences

  • People confess to anything under torture.
  • Using large dogs to attack bound, hand-cuffed prisoners is clearly torture.
  • What new tortures await me?
  • If Cheney calls it enhanced interrogation, he argues, this still doesn’t change the meaning of the word torture, which Cheney and the public know perfectly well. But cognitive linguists like Lakoff (1996) remind us that the public can be manipulated into believing that torture is “merely” an enhanced interrogation technique and thus does not protest. [2014 January 26, Claire Kramsch, “Language and Culture”, in AILA Review, volume 27, number 5, John Benjamins, →DOI, →ISSN, page 35:]
  • Santorum, in a comment regarding Senator John McCain's repudiation of torture, stated, "He doesn't understand how enhanced interrogation works. I mean, you break somebody, and after they've broken they become cooperative" (Summers 2011). [2015 November 30, Shane O'Mara, Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 12:]
  • cock and ball torture
  • tickle torture
  • Every time she says 'goodbye' it is torture!
  • Coventry City midfielder Josh Ruffels described his 11 months out injured as 'absolute torture' after the goalless draw with Derby County Under-21s. (http://www.ccfc.co.uk/news/article/eleven-months-of-absolute-torture-760652.aspx)

Etymology

From Middle English torture, from Old French torture, from Late Latin tortūra (“a twisting, writhing, of bodily pain, a griping colic;” in Medieval Latin “pain inflicted by judicial or ecclesiastical authority as a means of persuasion, torture”), from Latin tortus (whence also tort), past participle of torquēre (“to twist”). See: Middle English Nouns 'torture', Latin Nouns 'tortus'.