Weird Words » Political

Skullduggery

sarahscully — Tue, 11 May 2010 21:43:19 +0000

Skullduggery (spelled with either a “k” or “c” and/or two “l”s) comes from the Scottish word for adultry: “sculdudrie”. The word is used in modern parlance as a term for underhanded dealings or trickery, often political in nature. Ex. The skullduggery that was Watergate.

The word Skullduggery has been used to title various things from a 1970s Burt Reynolds film to the University of Adelaide orientation week, established in 1896.

Filibuster

sarahscully — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:10:04 +0000

The word “filibuster” can be traced back to a label given to pirates who marauded trade routes in the 17th and 18th centuries. It originated from the Dutch word vrijbuiter, which literally translates to “freebooter,” [vrij (“‘free’”) +‎ buit (“‘booty’”) +‎ er].

The term spread across Europe with the Spanish and French translating it into filibustero and filibustier, respectively.

Americans adapted the spelling and pronunciation to “filibuster” and expanded the definition to include mercenaries engaged in illicit military actions against foreign governments, referring in particular to Southern adventurers in Latin America.

In the mid-1800s, “filibuster” became popular in the U. S. Congress as a euphemism for delaying or blocking the passing of legislation by taking advantage of the procedural rules to hold the floor for inordinate amounts of time. Senator Huey Long (D-LA) demonstrated a particular talent for filibustering, reciting everything from Shakespeare to recipes for Southern dishes for up to 15 hours at a time.

Rule of Thumb

dave — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:05:13 +0000

According to ancient law, husbands were allowed to beat their wives with sticks that were no wider than the width of their thumb. Hence, the ‘rule of thumb’.

Posse

dave — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:45:29 +0000

‘Posse’ started out as a technical term in law, part of the term ‘posse comitatus,’ which in Medieval Latin meant ‘power of the county.’

As such, it referred to a group of citizens summoned by a sheriff to preserve the public peace as allowed for by law. ‘Preserving the public peace’ so often meant hunting down a supposed criminal that ‘posse’ eventually came to mean any group organized to make a search or embark on a mission.

In even broader use it can refer to any group, period. Sometimes nowadays that group is a gang or a rock band but it can as easily be any bunch of politicians, models, architects, tourists, children, or what have you, acting in concert.

Pork Barrel

dave — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:24:11 +0000

You might expect that the original pork barrels were barrels for storing pork — and you’re right. In the early 19th century, that’s exactly what ‘pork barrel’ meant.

But, the term was also used figuratively to mean ‘a supply of money’ or ‘one’s livelihood’ (a farmer, after all, could readily turn pork into cash).

When 20th-century legislators doled out appropriations that benefited their home districts, someone apparently made an association between the profit a farmer got from a barrel of pork and the benefits derived from certain state and federal projects. By 1909, ‘pork barrel’ was being used as a noun naming such government appropriations, and today the term is often used attributively in constructions such as ‘pork barrel politics’ or ‘pork barrel project.’

Marshall

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:13:55 +0000

A logical assumption is that ‘marshal’ is related to ‘martial,’ but the resemblance is purely coincidental. Although most French words are derived from Latin, a few result from the 3rd-century Germanic occupation of France, and the early French ‘mareschal’ is one such word. ‘Mareschal’ came from Old High German ‘marahscalc,’ formed by combining ‘marah’ (horse) and ‘scalc’ (servant). ‘Mareschal’ originally meant ‘horse servant,’ but by the time it was borrowed into Middle English in the 13th century, it described a French high royal official. English applied the word to a similar position, but it eventually came to have other meanings. By contrast, ‘martial’ derives from ‘Mars,’ the Latin name for the god of war, and is completely unrelated.

Lynch

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:50:09 +0000

Lynch law (lynching) is a term describing the rough-and-ready administration of justice by a mob in cases where the law is inadequate or dilatory (nowadays popularly meaning the execution of a supposed criminal). The term originates from the practice of Charles Lynch, a farmer in Virginia, USA who during the later part of the 18th century supported revolutionary principles in the district where he lived by catching ‘Tories’ and infamous people, whom he then hanged by their thumbs until they cried out ‘Liberty for All’.

In a Rut

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:37:07 +0000

In the horse and buggy days the dirt roads would get worn with ruts from the wagon wheels.
Once you got your wagon wheels into these ruts it was very hard to get them out, you had to follow the same old path.
Thomas Carlyle (1839): Essay on Chartism - “Parliaments, lumbering along in their deep ruts of commonplace.”

Cracker

admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:22:03 +0000

This word is taken from the white slave owner cracking his whip at his slaves.