bilboes

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Here, Nicholls, this man is your prisoner; get the bilboes and clap them on him.

From The Missing Merchantman by Overend, William Heysham

The bilboes is a bar of iron with fetters annexed to it, by which mutinous or disorderly sailors were anciently linked together.

From Folk-lore of Shakespeare by Thiselton-Dyer, Thomas Firminger

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

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

It was a rule that none should speak to a man in the bilboes.

From On the Spanish Main Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. by Masefield, John