coffle
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Contents |
[edit] English
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[edit] Etymology
From Arabic قافلة (qāfila, “caravan”).
[edit] Pronunciation
[edit] Noun
coffle (plural coffles)
- A line of people or animals fastened together, especially a chain of prisoners or slaves.
- 1816, Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa:
- 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.
- 2000, George RR Martin, A Storm of Swords, Bantam 2011, p. 323:
- 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.
- 2011, Susan Eva O'Donovan, The New York Times, 18 Feb 2011:
- 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.
- 1816, Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa:
