barracoon
barracoon noun: a temporary cage for holding (originally) black slaves, and later convicts and other types of prisoners.
Noun
barracoon (plural barracoons)
- A temporary cage for holding (originally) black slaves, and later convicts and other types of prisoners.
- Beyond Cape Palmas, the coast line is a beach of bright white sand, from which the slave barracoons have now disappeared […].1863, Richard F. Burton, Wanderings in West Africa, Dover Publications 1991 edition, volume II, page 36
- He was now a prisoner, and—thrust into a suffocating barracoon, herded with the foulest of mankind, with all imaginable depths of blasphemy and indecency sounded hourly in his sight and hearing—he lost his self-respect, and became what the jailers took him to be […].1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of his Natural Life, Penguin, published 2009, page 53
Forms of barracoon
| plural | barracoons |
|---|
Origin of barracoon
From Spanish barracón, barraca.
Questions about barracoon
- What does barracoon mean?
- Barracoon means a temporary cage for holding (originally) black slaves, and later convicts and other types of prisoners.
- What part of speech is barracoon?
- Barracoon is a noun.
- What is the plural of barracoon?
- The plural of barracoon is barracoons.
Words near barracoon in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: barracoon (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: “barracoon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/barracoon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.