The Etymology of Garrote
Garrote is a Spanish loanword whose own origin is genuinely contested. The Spanish noun garrote referred originally to a thick wooden stick or cudgel and, by extension, to any stick used to twist and tighten something — particularly the wooden lever inserted into a tourniquet or rope to apply pressure. From this twisting-stick sense it came to name a specific Iberian instrument of execution: a wooden post with an iron collar that tightened around the condemned person's neck by a turning screw or lever. This device was used in Spain and Portugal as a judicial method of killing from at least the 13th century until 1974. English borrowed garrote in the early 17th century in this Spanish-execution sense and later extended it to any cord, wire, or band used to strangle someone, especially as an assassination tool. The deeper origin of Spanish garrote is disputed: most lexicographers favour a derivation from Old French garrot (a thick stick used in tourniquets, possibly from a Frankish *wrokkōn, to twist), but a pre-Roman Iberian substrate origin has also been proposed. The honest answer is that the etymology is uncertain.