bilboes

Example Sentences

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A slang term for the ship's irons or bilboes.

From The Sailor's Word-Book An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc. by Belcher, Edward, Sir

Shakspeare mentions Hamlet thinking of a kind of fighting, "That would not let me sleep: methought, I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes."

From The Sailor's Word-Book An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc. by Belcher, Edward, Sir

One of the earliest of these degrading engines of confinement for public exposure, to be used in punishment in this country, was the bilboes.

From Curious Punishments of Bygone Days by Earle, Alice Morse

William James, for incontinency, was ſentenced to be ſet in the bilboes at Boſton and Salem, and bound in 20l.

From The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts by Brooks, Henry M. (Henry Mason)

The Royal James hurried down the Chesapeake for a day and a night before Captain Bonnet gave orders to free the young prisoners below in the bilboes.

From The Black Buccaneer by Meader, Stephen W. (Stephen Warren)