coffle

plural coffles · alternative kaffle

1. A line of people or animals fastened together, especially a chain of prisoners or slaves.

   If the explorer could make Kamalia he might be able to hook up with a slave coffle heading for the coast.

   1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin, published 2006, page 173

   5 more examples

   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.

   1816, Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa

   I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle, as the slaves march on, as the husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fastened together with wrist-chains and ankle-chains,

   1892, Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”, in Leaves of Grass […], Philadelphia, Pa.: David McKay, publisher, […], →OCLC

   Once all experience is finally reduced to marketable image, once the receiving user of user-friendly receivers can break from the coffle and choose freely, Americanly, from an Americanly infinite variety of moving images hardly distinguishable from real-life images[…]

   1997 [1990], David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN

   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.

   2000 August 8, George R[aymond] R[ichard] Martin, “Daenerys [Targaryen]”, in A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire; 3), London: Voyager, →ISBN, page 266

   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.

   2011 February 18, Susan Eva O'Donovan, “William Webb's World”, in New York Times

present singular third person coffles · participle present coffling · participle past coffled · past coffled · alternative kaffle

1. transitiveTo fasten (a line of people or animals) together.