Blackbirder

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A trader who seized or lured Pacific islanders into forced labour, especially on plantations in the nineteenth century ; a vessel used to carry such captured people across the sea
2. One who kidnapped or deceptively recruited South Sea islanders to work under coercion on distant plantations ; a ship employed in carrying those seized people for labour
3. A man who abducted or tricked Pacific islanders into servitude overseas ; a boat or ship that transported these abducted workers during the nineteenth-century labour trade

Etymology: A blackbirder was a slave trader, and the word's history is a grim one. It was formed in English from "blackbird," used in the sense of a person who captured people, plus the agent suffix "-er," which comes down through Old English and Middle English. The suffix's ancestry runs through Latin "-arius," which English received partly by way of Old French "-ier," so the ending itself is a long-standing English tool for naming people by their work. The compound reflects the trade it named. In the nineteenth century, "blackbirding" was the term for kidnapping or coercively recruiting men and boys, largely from islands in the Pacific, to work on plantations in Queensland and Fiji. The "blackbird" element refers to the captured people themselves, and the word carried that cruel euphemism into the name of the traders who did it.

Synonyms: kidnapper, slave trader, slaver

Antonyms: liberator