Word.ws English Dictionary

bilboes

/ˈbɪlbəʊz/

bilboes noun: an iron bar placed around the ankles of prisoners, and having sliding shackles.

Noun

bilboes pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) An iron bar placed around the ankles of prisoners, and having sliding shackles.
    • … me thought I lay
      Worse then the mutines in the Bilboes, rashly,c. 1600, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, line 2505 (Folio 1, 1623)
    • The bilboes looked like handcuffs that went around the ankles. The prisoner lay flat on his back, in the dirt, his feet suspended in the air by a length of iron bar to which the bilboes were fastened.2001, Glen David Gold, Carter Beats The Devil

Origin of bilboes

Unknown. Purported to have been invented in Bilbao, Spain, yet the device's name predates the Spanish Armada that supposedly imported it.

Questions about bilboes

What does bilboes mean?
Bilboes means an iron bar placed around the ankles of prisoners, and having sliding shackles.
What part of speech is bilboes?
Bilboes is a noun.
How do you pronounce bilboes?
Bilboes is pronounced /ˈbɪlbəʊz/.

Words near bilboes in the dictionary

  1. bilbie
  2. bilbies
  3. bilbo
  4. Bilbo Baggins
  5. bilboe
  6. bilboes
  7. Bilboesque
  8. bilboquet
  9. bilboquets
  10. bilbos
  11. Bilbrey

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bilboes (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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