BARBARY COAST • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Barbary Coast

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/bˈɑrbəri koʊst/ Listen

Barbary Coast

noun

A part of a city that is notorious for gambling dens and brothels and saloons and riotous night life (especially the waterfront of San Francisco after the gold rush of 1849).

The Mediterranean coast of northern Africa that was famous for its Moorish pirates.

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Etymology of 'Barbary Coast'

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"Barbary Coast" Quotes from Famous Books

... an hour Suvaroff rose and went out. He found a squalid wine-shop in the quarter just below the Barbary Coast. He went in and sat alone at a table. The floors had not been freshly sanded for weeks; a dank mildew covered the green wall-paper. He called for brandy, and a fat, greasy-haired man placed a bottle of villainous stuff before him. Suvaroff poured ...

— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... of the Tobie, cast away on the Barbary coast a few years after, "began with heavy hearts to sing the twelfth Psalm, 'Help, Lord, for good and godly men,' etc. Howbeit, ere we had finished four verses, the waves of the sea had ...

— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... waved a gesture of disgust. "How can you say so? It's horrible. It isn't Adrian. I can see the point where he left it to the imagination. Jaffery, with no imagination, has come in and spoiled it. And then the scene on the Barbary Coast of San Francisco, where Fenton finds Ellina Ray, the broken-down star of London musical comedy. Adrian never wrote it. It's the sort of claptrap he hated. He has often told me so. Jaffery thought it was ...

— Jaffery • William J. Locke

Words linked to "Barbary Coast" : seashore, city district, seacoast, Barbary, coast, sea-coast