Other forms: executed, executing, executes
To execute is to carry out a plan exactly as designed. Execute the plan, well executed, execute a manoeuvre.
In business and sport it is high praise: the idea was good and the execution was better. In computing, to execute a program is to run it. In law, executing a document means signing it so that it takes effect. And the grim sense is to put somebody to death by legal sentence — executed at dawn — which is the meaning most people meet first. Note executive, executor and execution, which covers all of these.
1verbexecuteTo carry out a plan exactly as designed.
“The manoeuvre was executed about as well as it could be.”
2verbputTo put somebody to death by legal sentence.
“Two of them were executed and the sentence was later called a mistake.”
3verbrunTo run a computer program.
“Double-click the file to execute the program.”
execute is a carrying out.
Latin exsequi means to follow out or carry through — ex- plus sequi, to follow. Every sense is a following through, including the legal killing, which was carrying out a sentence.
Proto-Indo-European
*sekʷ-
Latin
exsecutus
Old French
executer
English, today
execute
Built from
From Old French executer (French exécuter), from Latin exsecutus, past participle of exsequor (“to follow (up/through)”), from ex- (“out”) + sequor (“to follow”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA