filibuster

• WordNet 3.6
  • v filibuster obstruct deliberately by delaying
  • n filibuster (law) a tactic for delaying or obstructing legislation by making long speeches
  • n filibuster a legislator who gives long speeches in an effort to delay or obstruct legislation that he (or she) opposes
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• Interesting fact: US Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina set a filibuster record in the U.S. Senate on August 19, 1957. He spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes.
• • n Filibuster A lawless military adventurer, especially one in quest of plunder; a freebooter; -- originally applied to buccaneers infesting the Spanish American coasts, but introduced into common English to designate the followers of Lopez in his expedition to Cuba in 1851, and those of Walker in his expedition to Nicaragua, in 1855.
  • Filibuster To act as a filibuster, or military freebooter.
  • Filibuster To delay legislation, by dilatory motions or other artifices.
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• • n filibuster A freebooter: in history, a name distinctively applied to the West Indian bucaneers or pirates of the seventeenth century. See bucaneer.
  • n filibuster Hence One of a band of men organized, in disregard of international law, for the purpose of invading and revolutionizing a foreign state. Specifically applied in history to the members of certain expeditions which in the middle of the nineteenth century originated in or set out from the United States against certain Spanish-American countries for the purpose of revolutionizing them. The principal of these expeditions were those led by Narciso Lopez from New Orleans against Cuba, in 1850-51, and those by William Walker from California against the Mexican state of Sonora in 1853-54, and against Nicaragua in 1855-58. Both leaders were captured and put to death, the latter after having succeeded in his second object and exercised sovereign power for some time over Nicaragua. Hence
  • n filibuster In a legislative or other deliberative body, a member in the minority who resorts to irregular or obstructive tactics to prevent the adoption of a measure or procedure which is favored by the majority. Also filibusterer.
  • filibuster To act as a freebooter or bucaneer.
  • filibuster To obstruct legislation by undue use of the technicalities of parliamentary law or privileges, as when the minority in a legislative assembly, in order to prevent the passage of some measure obnoxious to them, endeavor to consume time or tire out their opponents by useless motions, speeches, objections, etc.
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• • n Filibuster fil′i-bus-tėr a lawless military or piratical adventurer, as in the West Indies: a buccaneer
  • v.i Filibuster to obstruct legislation wantonly by endless speeches, motions, &c
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