Botany Bay fever
(UK, euphemistic, obsolete) Penal servitude; transportation.
Definitions
(UK, euphemistic, obsolete) Penal servitude; transportation.
What!—me not know my * * * Testament! Why!—it's the only * * * book you get a word of when you're nursing for Botany Bay fever.
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🇬🇧About British & Irish slang slang
UK and Irish slang — Cockney, Scouse, Geordie, Yorkshire, Glaswegian, Brummie, Welsh, West Country, plus Irish English. Centuries of regional dialects feeding into modern British and Irish street talk.
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Semantically related
- Bay fever84%
(Australia, slang, obsolete, pejorative) Any illness feigned by convicts to avoid being sent to Botany Bay.
- Botany Bay dozen72%
(Australia, slang, obsolete, or, historical) 25 lashes, i.e. strokes of a whip across a person's back as a punishment.
- Botany Bay65%
, south of Sydney Cove, Australia; the site of a landing by explorer Captain James Cook and later of the First Fleet, and originally planned to be the site of the first penal colony in Australia.
- spring fever63%
(obsolete, Australia) Scurvy.
- Botany Bay61%
The penal colony, actually established at Sydney Cove, which developed into the now city of Sydney.