Word.ws English Dictionary

darbies

darbies is the plural of darby.

Meaning of darby

Noun

darby (plural darbies)

  1. A specialized tool used to smooth and level the surface of wet concrete, consisting of a stiff wedge or triangle of wood or metal.
    Synonyms:
    derby, derby float, derby slicker

See all 10 meanings of darby

Noun

darbies pl (plural only)

  1. (UK, plural, plural-only, slang) handcuffs
    • Who's afraid of him, except the old governor who daresn't catch him and put him in double-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him go about kidnapping people […]1851, Herman Melville, chapter 73, in Moby Dick
    • And he says, 'I'll go along quiet, Bobby,' he says, 'without the darbies,' he says.1885, Lewis Carroll, “A Tangled Tale”, in The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll, New York: Vintage, published 1976, page 1058

Questions about darbies

What does darbies mean?
Darbies means handcuffs.
What is darbies the plural of?
Darbies is the plural of darby.
What part of speech is darbies?
Darbies is a noun.

Words near darbies in the dictionary

  1. darbepoetin
  2. darbepoietin
  3. darbha
  4. Darbhanga
  5. Darbhanga Division
  6. darbies
  7. Darbinian
  8. Darbinians
  9. Darbinyan
  10. Darbinyans
  11. Darbonne

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: darbies (page history and authors); darby (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-darbies.ogg.

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