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in effigy
Idioms and Phrases
Symbolically. For example, That umpire was completely unfair—let's burn him in effigy . Now used only figuratively, this term formerly signified a way of carrying out the sentence of a criminal who had escaped, such as burn in effigy or hang in effigy . A dummy was made of the criminal or a detested political figure and subjected to the prescribed punishment. [c. 1600]Example Sentences
And during a violent 1975 pressman’s strike, seen in the opening of the film, workers burned Graham in effigy.
Anti-Chessman crowds burned Brown in effigy and booed him and his family in public.
“They have stopped burning you in effigy.”
But then the political became personal: Butler was physically attacked in 2017 while speaking in Brazil, and burned in effigy by protesters who shouted, “Take your ideology to hell.”
Attacking President Biden in effigy is part of a much larger pattern of behavior.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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