The Volokh Conspiracy

Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent

Volokh Conspiracy

Derrick

|

Oil derricks, it turns out, are named (indirectly) after someone named Derrick—not an oil man, though, but a hangman: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word (which originally referred to hangmen and gallows) comes from

Derrick, the surname of a noted hangman at Tyburn c1600. 

I did not know that.