Blackbirder
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A person involved in blackbirding (kidnapping Pacific islanders as cheap labour).
"The renaming of New South Wales’s Ben Boyd National Park — named for Australia’s first blackbirder — as Beowa National Park in 2022 was a good first step. But apologising for running a slave trade that tore tens of thousands of Pacific islanders from their families should not be a hard sell in Australia’s parliament."
- 2 A ship used for blackbirding; a slaver.
- 3 A slavecatcher US
"Runaway slaves and free blacks were constantly being kidnapped by New York City’s many “Blackbirders,” slave-catching bounty hunters who deported their captures to the plantations."
Example
More examples"The renaming of New South Wales’s Ben Boyd National Park — named for Australia’s first blackbirder — as Beowa National Park in 2022 was a good first step. But apologising for running a slave trade that tore tens of thousands of Pacific islanders from their families should not be a hard sell in Australia’s parliament."
Etymology
From blackbird + -er.
More for "blackbirder"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.