barracoon

English
a barracoon

Etymology

From Spanish barracón, barraca.

Noun

barracoon (plural barracoons)

  1. A temporary cage for holding (originally) black slaves, and later convicts and other types of prisoners.
    • 1863, Richard F. Burton, Wanderings in West Africa, Dover Publications 1991 edition, volume II, page 36:
      Beyond Cape Palmas, the coast line is a beach of bright white sand, from which the slave barracoons have now disappeared […].
    • 1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of his Natural Life, Penguin, published 2009, page 53:
      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 […] .

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