execute
Formsexecutes, executing, executed
- 1To carry out an order, plan, or task and put it into effect.
Commanders need to execute the strategy without hesitation.
The crew executed the maneuver flawlessly during the storm.
Similarimplement, perform, accomplish, complete, fulfill
- 2To put someone to death as a legal punishment for a capital crime.
The kingdom would execute traitors in the public square.
Authorities executed the convicted assassin after years of appeals.
Similarkill
Note
The grim sense keeps a lawful core. Its Latin source, exsequor, meant "to follow through," especially "to go through with a deed or punishment." The person is the object, and the crime follows with for: Shakespeare's The First Part of Henry the Sixth (1591) has a father "for treason executed." Because the word implies a sentence carried out, it is not a neutral synonym for kill. The same follow-through runs through carrying out orders.
- 3
- 4To carry out the formal steps, such as signing, that make a contract or other document legally binding and valid.
The buyer and seller will execute the deed at closing.
She executed her will with two witnesses present.
Similarsign
Note
Lawyers use this sense for the act that makes a document count: signing, sealing or delivering a deed, will or contract. The phrase execute a contract can therefore point two ways. It can mean signing the contract into force, or it can mean performing what the contract requires, and only context settles which. In drafting, it is safer to say signed or performed when the difference matters.
- 5To start or launch a program, command, or set of instructions so that it runs.
You can execute the script from the command line.
The system executed thousands of instructions per second.
Similarrun, start (entry), launch, open
Note
Computing's word for setting instructions in motion: a processor executes a program by fetching, decoding and carrying out each instruction in turn. Run, start and launch mean much the same in everyday talk. Execute is the more technical choice, and its usual objects are programs, scripts, commands and instructions. A person or system is the subject, while the intransitive use makes the program itself the subject.
- 6Of a program or process, to run, usually completing without errors.
Programs must execute cleanly before they ship.
The routine executed without a single error.
Note
Here the program does the acting, and there is no object: the code executed. The word reports that the program ran, usually to completion, but not that its results were right. A program can execute and still turn up bad data, as in "the program executed, but data problems were discovered." Add cleanly or without errors when success is the point.
Practice
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Origin
From Old French executer (modern French exécuter), from Latin exsecutus, the past participle of exsequor "to follow up or through" (especially in the sense of carrying out a deed or a punishment) built from ex- ("out") plus sequor ("to follow").