Barbados

Definition

To press-gang (force into naval service).

Etymology

From Portuguese barbados (“bearded ones”), from barba (“beard”), due to the dense hanging moss or vines in the island.

Example Sentences

• "The Barbadian planters […] resorted to shipping in hundreds of Scottish and Irish soldiers who’d been taken prisoner during Oliver Cromwell’s conquest. When that supply ran out, they took to kidnapping children, so many that a new term was coined: “barbadosed” meant the same thing in the late seventeenth century as “shanghaied” would in the twentieth."