coffle

UK/ˈkɒfl̩//ˈkɔfl̩/

coffle noun: a line of people or animals fastened together, especially a chain of prisoners or slaves.

Image: various, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

coffle (plural coffles)

A line of people or animals fastened together, especially a chain of prisoners or slaves.
- The people of the coffle spent the day in drying such articles as were wet, and in cleaning ten pairs of ornamented pistols with shea-butter.1816, Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa
- I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle, as the slaves march on, as the husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fastened together with wrist-chains and ankle-chains,1892, Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”, in Leaves of Grass […], Philadelphia, Pa.: David McKay, publisher, […], →OCLC

coffle (third-person singular simple present coffles, present participle coffling, simple past and past participle coffled)

அடிமைக்குழு

If the explorer could make Kamalia he might be able to hook up with a slave coffle heading for the coast.1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin, published 2006, page 173:
Her litter came to a sudden halt at the cross street, to allow a coffle of slaves to shuffle across her path, urged along by the crack of an overseer's lash.2000 August 8, George R[aymond] R[ichard] Martin, “Daenerys [Targaryen]”, in A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire; 3), London...
It dominated late-night dinner conversation; it traveled along with marching columns of chained slaves, the infamous coffle lines that remain the iconic face of the domestic slave trade.2011 February 18, Susan Eva O'Donovan, “William Webb's World”, in New York Times:

Noun
plural	coffles
alternative form	kaffle
Verb
third-person singular present	coffles
present participle	coffling
past participle	coffled
past	coffled

From Arabic قَافِلَة (qāfila, “caravan”). Doublet of cafila.

What does coffle mean?: Coffle means a line of people or animals fastened together, especially a chain of prisoners or slaves.
What is coffle in Tamil?: Coffle in Tamil is அடிமைக்குழு. See Coffle meaning in Tamil.
How do you use coffle in a sentence?: If the explorer could make Kamalia he might be able to hook up with a slave coffle heading for the coast.
What part of speech is coffle?: Coffle can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce coffle?: Coffle is pronounced /ˈkɒfl̩/ (UK).
What is the plural of coffle?: The plural of coffle is coffles.

Adapted from Wiktionary: coffle (page history and authors); coffle (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-coffle.ogg, en-us-coffle.ogg.

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