darbies BrE

"No need to clap the darbies round the poor sod's wrists.

"Darbies and leg-irons, I make them out to be, though they're a good deal different from the style we use at the Yard.

Clap the darbies on us, Fraser!

Reyna reminisced briefly about the local derbies (he pronounced them "darbies," British-style) he encountered in Europe.

DARBIES British slang for handcuffs.

The lads are ready for you with the darbies, and they'll clink them on in the crack of this whip, unless you prefer another touch of it first."

Perhaps only in the "Billy in the Darbies" scene, when the manacled youth sings his farewell to a world he never understood, does he engage one's full sympathy.

He started it as a poem, a ballad entitled "Billy in the Darbies", which he intended to include in his book, John Marr and Other Sailors.

It is leveled with tools called "darbies," "rods," and "feathereges," scraped smooth, and floated to provide a smooth, even surface onto which the finish coat is applied.

His parents, John and Jane Jefferys lived in a house called Darbies in the village of Midgham in the parish of Thatcham in Berkshire.

"All we need now is for Lem to get back tomorrow and clap the darbies on the man who killed Charlie Blake, and we'll have had the best week we've had for a long time.

THE LISTENERS, New World Records, William Parker, baritone, Includes: "Billy in the Darbies."

SECOND WATCH: (PRODUCES HANDCUFFS) Here are the darbies.

"Those who dealt that blow," said he, "were already well used to this little instrument"; and so saying he produced a pair of "darbies," a kind of handcuff made of a double ring of iron secured by a lock.

Even stronger was the incisive, commanding Jonathan McGovern, 25, who sang Britten's "Billy in the Darbies" from Billy Budd with blazing sincerity and infused a Rachmaninoff song with palpitating passion.

He jumped up when he heard my business, and I had my whistle to my lips to call a couple of river police, who were round the corner, but he seemed to have no heart in him, and he held out his hands quietly enough for the darbies.

BILLY IN THE DARBIES Good of the Chaplain to enter Lone Bay And down on his marrow-bones here and pray For the likes just o' me, Billy Budd.

The sailor who wrote it gave it the title "Billy in the Darbies" (darbies is British slang for handcuffs), and he has Billy himself narrate his thoughts and feelings on the night before his hanging.