Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A barracks in which slaves or convicts were formerly held in temporary confinement.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A barrack or an inclosure containing sheds in which negro slaves were temporarily detained; a slave-pen or slave-depot.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A slave warehouse, or an inclosure where slaves are quartered temporarily.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The temporary cage for slaves and indentured servants in the Louisiana Territory and French colonial Africa.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Spanish barracón, augmentative of barraca, hut; see barrack.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Spanish barracón, barraca.

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Examples

  • Presently appeared a kind of barracoon, a large square of thick cane-work and thatch about eight feet high, the Fetish house of the

    Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo 2003

  • Presently appeared a kind of barracoon, a large square of thick cane-work and thatch about eight feet high, the Fetish house of the "Jinkimba" or circumcised boys, who received us with unearthly yells.

    Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 Richard Francis Burton 1855

  • They were shut up safely in the "barracoon," -- such was the name of the large building -- and to-morrow, that day, or whenever the captain was ready, he would deliver them over.

    Ran Away to Sea Mayne Reid 1850

  • "barracoon;" in the palmy days of the trade slave-pens occupied the ground now covered by the chapel, the schoolroom, and the dwelling-house, and extended over the site of the factory to the river-bank.

    Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 Richard Francis Burton 1855

  • The St. Jude Project, Robert Weingart as reformed recidivist, Kermit Abelard as egalitarian poet, Timothy Abelard as the tragic oligarch stricken by a divine hand for defying the natural order, Layton Blanchet as the working-class entrepreneur who amassed millions of dollars through his intelligence and his desire to help small investors, a historic Acadian cottage that hid a barracoon.

    The Glass Rainbow James Lee Burke 2010

  • The St. Jude Project, Robert Weingart as reformed recidivist, Kermit Abelard as egalitarian poet, Timothy Abelard as the tragic oligarch stricken by a divine hand for defying the natural order, Layton Blanchet as the working-class entrepreneur who amassed millions of dollars through his intelligence and his desire to help small investors, a historic Acadian cottage that hid a barracoon.

    The Glass Rainbow James Lee Burke 2010

  • In moments like these, I knew that Louisiana was still a magical place, not terribly different than it was when Jim Bowie and his business partner the pirate Jean Lafitte smuggled slaves illegally into the United States and kept them in a barracoon, somewhere close to the very spot I was standing on.

    The Glass Rainbow James Lee Burke 2010

  • In moments like these, I knew that Louisiana was still a magical place, not terribly different than it was when Jim Bowie and his business partner the pirate Jean Lafitte smuggled slaves illegally into the United States and kept them in a barracoon, somewhere close to the very spot I was standing on.

    The Glass Rainbow James Lee Burke 2010

  • The St. Jude Project, Robert Weingart as reformed recidivist, Kermit Abelard as egalitarian poet, Timothy Abelard as the tragic oligarch stricken by a divine hand for defying the natural order, Layton Blanchet as the working-class entrepreneur who amassed millions of dollars through his intelligence and his desire to help small investors, a historic Acadian cottage that hid a barracoon.

    The Glass Rainbow James Lee Burke 2010

  • In moments like these, I knew that Louisiana was still a magical place, not terribly different than it was when Jim Bowie and his business partner the pirate Jean Lafitte smuggled slaves illegally into the United States and kept them in a barracoon, somewhere close to the very spot I was standing on.

    The Glass Rainbow James Lee Burke 2010

Comments

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  • An enclosure or barracks formerly used for temporary confinement of slaves or convicts. Used to describe the "housing," such as it was, along the coast of West Africa during the transatlantic slave trade, where captive Africans were held until ships could take them to slavery, most often in South America or the West Indies, but with significant numbers traveling to North America and the Middle East. This very dangerous and often fatal journey was known as the middle passage.

    March 17, 2008

  • "'I see His Majesty takes his seamen where he can get them,' I murmured to Ian.

    'He does for a fact. Mr. Dick here was pressed out of a Guinea pirate, who took him from a slave ship, who in turn took him from a barracoon on the Guinea coast. I'm no so sure whether he thinks His Majesty's accommodations are an improvement—but he says he's got nay particular reservation about going along of us.'"

    —Diana Gabaldon, An Echo in the Bone (New York: Delacorte Press, 2009), 294

    December 17, 2009