This is a bit of electrical trivia I ran across:
Electrocute means to injure or kill with electricity. You can be electrocuted and survive.
Electrocution means to kill with electricity. After electrocution, you're dead.
Electrocution a is portmanteau word derived from "electrical execution", and it originally applied only to intentional death, not accidents or suicides. However, there being no word for non-judicial death by electricity, the word came to be used for those deaths as well.
Only two countries have used electrocution as a means of capital punishment. One is the United States, where it was invented, and which adopted it for capital punishment around 1900. The other country is the Philippines, which adopted it in 1924 under US occupation, and used it until 1979.
Electrocution is now almost obsolete and is used in only 4 states: Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and Virginia.
The electric chair was last used on January 16, 2013, when Robert Gleason was executed in Virginia.
I'm a little surprised it's not used in Texas. It doesn't surprise me at all that it's still used in Virginia.
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