baroningn.
/ˈbarənɪŋ/, U.S. /ˈbɛrənɪŋ/ Criminals' slang.
Among prisoners: the practice of selling goods (esp. tobacco) or lending goods or money with interest. Cf. baron n. 2c.
ΚΠ
1960 H. J. Klare Anat. of Prison iii. 37 There is also no organized ‘baroning’, and whatever occasional small plots there may be hatched are usually quickly discovered.
1976 A. Miller Inside Outside iv. 48 One of the disadvantages of the Dover kind of system is that ‘baronning’ (selling items, mainly tobacco, for profit) and bullying can go undetected.
2015 Guardian (Nexis) 9 Jan. The prison criminal subculture dominated: ‘baroning’, the lending of tobacco at extortionate interest rates, was rife.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, September 2018; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.1960