a platform from which criminals are executed (hanged or beheaded)
<noun.artifact>
a temporary arrangement erected around a building for convenience of workers
<noun.artifact> [ verb ]
provide with a scaffold for support
<verb.contact> scaffold the building before painting it
Scaffold \Scaf"fold\, v. t. To furnish or uphold with a scaffold.
Scaffold \Scaf"fold\, n. [OF. eschafault, eschafaut, escafaut, escadafaut, F. ['e]chafaud; probably originally the same word as E. & F. catafalque, It. catafalco. See {Catafalque}.] 1. A temporary structure of timber, boards, etc., for various purposes, as for supporting workmen and materials in building, for exhibiting a spectacle upon, for holding the spectators at a show, etc.
Pardon, gentles all, The flat, unraised spirits that have dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object. --Shak.
2. Specifically, a stage or elevated platform for the execution of a criminal; as, to die on the scaffold.
That a scaffold of execution should grow a scaffold of coronation. --Sir P. Sidney.
3. (Metal.) An accumulation of adherent, partly fused material forming a shelf, or dome-shaped obstruction, above the tuy[`e]res in a blast furnace.
In late 1973, a winter storm caused a construction scaffold to hit a slab that fell and demolished a car, said the spokesman Mike Thompson.
"What's left of Chinese communism is but a scaffold without a building," he said. "Its rise was a tragedy of the times.
The jolliest song of the lot, 'I'm Going to the Lordy', comes from Charles Guiteau, assassin of President Garfield, as he climbs to the scaffold.
(AP) - Rep. Denny Smith broke his right arm and thumb when he fell from a scaffold while washing his antique airplane at his Salem home.
"The workmanship of the knitting is right for the time and when it was bought for us from a collector in 1925, it had a note attached saying it had belonged to Dr. Hobbs, the physician who attended the king on the scaffold.
Four iron workers fell 30 feet when a scaffold on the newly reopened Williamsburg Bridge collapsed Friday afternoon, and one was hospitalized in serious condition, authorities said.
A videotape was released, showing a body hanging from a scaffold, but no corpse has been found.