Masochistic Cork

These are two commercial units on Shandon Street.

Maybe they want to discourage the Southsiders from taking out their passports to cross over.

Maybe English is not the first language of the business owner and so not a bad guess – it happens.

If so, maybe this is how words enter the dictionary.

Or maybe they do fit barbs and spikes to their customers….

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barb - definition
noun [countable] and synonyms
1 a short curved point on something such as a fishing hook that makes it difficult to remove
2  a remark or criticism that is unkind, although it may seem clever or funny
Macmillan Dictionary

noun

1. a subsidiary point facing in the opposite direction to the main point of a fish-hook, harpoon, arrow, etc, intended to make extraction difficult

1. any of various pointed parts, as on barbed wire

1. a cutting remark; gibe

1. any of the numerous hairlike filaments that form the vane of a feather

1. a beardlike growth in certain animals

1. a hooked hair or projection on certain fruits

1. any small cyprinid fish of the genus Barbus (or Puntius) and related genera, such as B. conchonius (rosy barb)

1. (usually plural) any of the small fleshy protuberances beneath the tongue in horses and cattle

1. a white linen cloth forming part of a headdress extending from the chin to the upper chest, originally worn by women in the Middle Ages, now worn by nuns of some orders

1. (obsolete) a beard

verb

1. (transitive) to provide with a barb or barbs

Collins Dictionary

barb noun 1 a point on a hook facing in the opposite direction to the main point, which makes it difficult to pull the hook out. 2 a humorous but hurtful remark. 3 one of the threadlike structures forming a feather's web. verb (barbed, barbing) to fit or provide something with barbs or a barb. See also barbed.
ETYMOLOGY: 14c in obsolete sense 'beard' and then applied to a comparable projection or appendage: from Latin barba beard.
Chambers Dictionary