"Hangers-on. A word of curiously macabre derivation. Before the introduction in the 1780s of the more humane trap-door, which usually broke the prisoner’s neck, hanging meant death by slow strangulation. The prisoner might arrange for his friends — or pay someone — to pull heavily on his feet as the execution was carried out, in an attempt to break his neck and ensure a speedier death. These friends were known as hangers-on."
—
Where Queen Elizabeth Slept & What the Butler Saw: A Treasury of Historical Terms From the Sixteenth Century to the Present by David N. Durant (via novazembla)
Whaaaaaaat.
