to scalp
8
9.9
- verb
- /skælp/
- Offensive
:
arrancar el cuero cabelludo
- Chingachgook retrieves his club as his scalping knife slashes down... Uncas scalps the man he killed.
Examples
-
Over there, Grant and his Highlanders were massacred and scalped.
-
He is robbed, tortured, scalped, and left to rot.
Academic text (1991) -
And for all these reasons, I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.
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Listen," he says, stroking her hair as if he means to scalp her.
Fiction book (1997) -
You know how in those days the lndians used to scalp the settlers?
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My mother and father and kid brother were scalped and mutilated.
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Right here where your house is, you'd have been scalped.
-
After scalping the dead to have material evidence of their enterprise, Hannah Duston and her two companions made their way home down the Merrimack River.
Academic text (1998) -
While most antebellum writers state that the motive for taking the scalps was to use them as proof of her ill fortunes, Hawthorne's sketch suggests that Mrs. Duston killed and scalped the Native Americans because she expected to receive a scalp bounty.
Academic text (1998) -
The warrior took the enemy's trophy by deciding to scalp him after the battle.
Synonyms
1
9.9
To remove a person's scalp often as a violent act
Compounds
- US
A long piece of hair left on top of a shaved head, worn in some Indigenous North American cultures
Skin on the head that reacts easily to touch or hair products and feels sore, itchy
Surface Forms
Etymology
Scalp comes from the noun scalp, meaning the 'skin' on the top of the head, and was long used for the violent act of taking that skin as a trophy. So to scalp someone is to remove the skin and hair from the top of their head.