[Sp. corral an enclosed place, yard, court-yard, pen, poultry-yard, etc.] a. An enclosure or pen for horses, cattle, etc.; a fold; a stockade. (Chiefly in Spanish America and U.S.). Cf. KRAAL.
1582. N. Lichefield, trans. Castanheda’s Conq. E. Ind., A iij a. To be as it wer in one Corall, and vnder one Pastour or Shepheard.
1825. Caldcleugh, Trav. S. Amer., I. ix. 263. Catching the horses in his coral.
1845. Darwin, Voy. Nat., iv. (1852), 64. To drive all the cattle into the ‘corral.’ Note, The corral is an enclosure made of tall and strong stakes.
1887. M. Roberts, Western Avernus, 5. Building sheep ‘corrals’ or pens of heaped, thorny mesquite brush.
attrib. 1872. C. King, Mountain. Sierra Nev., v. 99. ‘To go and see if them corral bars are down.’
transf. 1849. Dana, Geol., vii. (1850), 381. This great corral [a crater], if we may use a foreign word, is a thousand feet deep.
1890. Cornh. Mag., April, 387. A bird in every bush, without one showing outside the corral of boughs.
b. An enclosure formed of wagons in an encampment, for defence against attack.
1847. Ruxton, Adv. Mexico, 174–5 (Bartlett). The waggons, formed into a corral or square, and close together, so that the whole made a most formidable fort.
1859. Marcy, Prairie Trav., xi. 55–6. The commander … will rapidly form his wagons into a circle or ‘corral,’ with the animals toward the centre.
c. An enclosure for capturing wild animals; e.g., wild elephants in Ceylon.
1845. Darwin, Voy. Nat., viii. (1876), 151. A troop of wild young horses is driven into the corral, or large enclosure of stakes.
1859. Tennent, Ceylon, II. VIII. iv. 348. In constructing the corral, collecting the elephants … and conducting all the laborious operations of the capture.
