Figurative senses of many words are not always included in all dictionaries.
"Garrote" must have been used to picture the shape and size of old locomotive brake levers.
There are many words that either were born or are used in a certain way by the population of some region; that is why there are 23 "
Academias de la lengua española".
We normally use the Spanish one as a common reference, because generally we understand each other in a standard register and use of language. For exceptions and local variations, most of us have our own references, like the one I quoted above.
Glad you have a good dictionary for reference. That's very important for learning a foreign language.
