Word.ws English Dictionary

Barbary Coast

Barbary Coast proper noun: the Mediterranean region off the coast of North Africa, once notorious as a haven for pirates.

Proper noun

Barbary Coast

  1. The Mediterranean region off the coast of North Africa, once notorious as a haven for pirates
  2. (broadly) A waterfront area of San Francisco at the time of the gold rush.
    • The tango, the Texas Tommy, Walking the Dog, the one step, the fox trot, the shimmy, and all their out-growths, had their origin in the palaces of lust on the Barbary Coast of San Francisco.1930, Jefferis & Nichols, Safe Counsel or Practical Eugenics, page 200

Questions about Barbary Coast

What does Barbary Coast mean?
Barbary Coast means the Mediterranean region off the coast of North Africa, once notorious as a haven for pirates.
What part of speech is Barbary Coast?
Barbary Coast is a proper noun.

Words near Barbary Coast in the dictionary

  1. Barbarrels
  2. Barbars
  3. barbary
  4. Barbary ape
  5. Barbary apes
  6. Barbary Coast
  7. Barbary dove
  8. Barbary doves
  9. Barbary duck
  10. Barbary falcon
  11. Barbary falcons

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Barbary Coast (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Barbary Coast.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/barbary_coast. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.