[So called by Captain Cook on account of the great variety of plants collected there by the botanist who accompanied him.] Proper name of a place in New South Wales, formerly a convict settlement; hence proverbially used in sense of ‘transportation’; also fig.
1812. Examiner, 19 Oct., 666/1. The famished wretch … is sent to the whipping-post or to Botany Bay.
1821. Byron, Juan, III. xciv. Such names at present cut a convict figure, The very Botany Bay in moral geography.
1841. Marryat, Poacher, vi. They are … sent off to Botany Bay.
