barracoon

Definition

A temporary cage for holding (originally) black slaves, and later convicts and other types of prisoners.

Etymology

From Spanish barracón, barraca.

Example Sentences

• "Beyond Cape Palmas, the coast line is a beach of bright white sand, from which the slave barracoons have now disappeared […]."
• "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 […]."