Short, sharp shock

Although the phrase originated earlier, it was popularised in Gilbert and Sullivan's 1885 comic opera The Mikado, where it appears in the song near the end of Act I, "I Am So Proud".

Mary I of England used the phrase in 1555 to refer to what she hoped would be a brief and effective use of brutality to persuade the populace to return to Catholicism by publicly burning a small number of visible Protestant heretics, rather than making a larger more systemic purge.

[3] John Conington's 1870 translation of the First Satire of Horace includes the following lines: Yon soldier's lot is happier, sure, than mine: One short, sharp shock, and presto!

[4] In Act I of the 1885 Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Mikado, the Emperor of Japan, having learned that the town of Titipu is behind on its quota of executions, has decreed that at least one beheading must occur immediately.

In the 1996 fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay, police commander Sam Vimes is "all for giving criminals a short, sharp shock", meaning electrocution.