Gallows
A gallows (or scaffold) is a frame, typically wooden, from which objects can be hung or “weighed”. Gallows were thus widely used for public weighing scales for large objects such as sacks of grain or minerals, usually positioned in markets or toll gates. The term was also used for a framework from which a ship’s anchor might be raised so that it no longer sitting on the bottom, i.e., “weighing [the] anchor”. In modern usage it has come to mean almost exclusively a scaffold or gibbet used for execution by hanging.
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