thumb|right|Symbolic robed figure of a medieval public executioner at Peter and Paul Fortress, [[Saint Petersburg, Russia]] thumb|right|Photograph (Hand-colouring of photographs|hand-coloured), original dated 1898, of the lord high executioner of the former princely state of Rewah, Central India, with large executioner's sword (Tegha sword) thumb|right|Depiction of a public execution in Brueghel's The Triumph of Death 1562–1563 thumb|right|Stylised depiction of public execution of pirates in Hamburg, Germany, 10 September 1573
An executioner is a person officially appointed to carry out capital punishment by executing condemned criminals, historically as a public spectacle. The role mattered as an instrument of state justice and social order, though it has largely disappeared in modern times as capital punishment has become less common or been abolished in many countries.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
thumb|right|Symbolic robed figure of a medieval public executioner at Peter and Paul Fortress, [[Saint Petersburg, Russia]] thumb|right|Photograph (Hand-colouring of photographs|hand-coloured), original dated 1898, of the lord high executioner of the former princely state of Rewah, Central India, with large executioner's sword (Tegha sword) thumb|right|Depiction of a public execution in Brueghel's The Triumph of Death 1562–1563 thumb|right|Stylised depiction of public execution of pirates in Hamburg, Germany, 10 September 1573
An executioner, also known as a hangman or headsman, is an official who effects a sentence of capital punishment on a condemned person.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).