I have often come across the phrase "strangled to death" in newspapers especially here in Malaysia. It is my contention that when a person is "strangled" he is already dead. Just as when a person is murdered, executed, electrocuted, killed, assassinated, drowned or hanged he is DEAD. Pointing this out to the editor of an English Improvement section of one particular newspaper that the phrase is a redunduncy in proper English, prompted a very clever reply from him that the usage is correct. He argued that if it was mentioned somewhere earlier in an article that the said person is already dead, than subsequent sentences with only "strangled" would suffice and imply that he was dead. Otherwise, to indicate that the person has died, the phrase "strangled to death" should be used. It was quite laughable.
Certainly, "strangle" is linked to words like "choke" and "squeeze". Quoting the Concise Oxford Dictionary, "Choke" is "to hinder of impede the breathing of a person by constricting the windpipe of ". However, "strangle" is "to squeeze the windpipe or neck so as TO KILL". So it is correct to say that a person was "choked to death". But NOT "strangled to death".
Similarly, a person may be beaten to death, burnt to death, hacked to death, mangled to death, or mauled to death.
Your comments are welcomed.
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2 comments:
My guess is that "strangle" is considered the equivalent as "cekik" in BM. If I'm correct, "cekik" doesn't necessarily imply death - it's more like squeezing someone's neck to make him suffer.(But a person could die from being "cekik-ed" hard enough!) The kamus I referred to translates "cekik" as " choke, or strangle " - therein lies the cause of the misunderstanding - that "choke" and "strangle" are the same.
"Cekik" is "choke". There is actually no equivalent to "strangle". Even the Oxford Fajar Advanced Learner's English-Malay Dictionary is unclear and uses "strangle" as "cekik". Another word sometimes used is "jerut"
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