• filibuster •

Printable Version Pronunciation: fi-lê-bê-stêr • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, Verb

Meaning: 1. A pirate, buccaneer, a free-booter, or a sea-faring adventurer who lives outside the law. 2. A tactic peculiar to the US Senate whereby a speaker may refuse to yield the floor in a debate for as long as he or she can keep talking, thereby preventing a bill from coming to a vote.

Notes: When President Bush submitted the same slate of candidates for judicial positions that were rejected by the Senate last year, the Democrats, now in the minority in the Senate, threatened to filibuster the nominations. The rules of the Senate provide each senator with only one opportunity to speak, but no senator can be silenced unless "the question is called", i.e. a vote on cloture, ending debate, is taken. A cloture vote requires a 3/5 majority to pass (2/3 on a question to change the rules). So, a filibuster succeeds so long as one senator continues to talk and the vote to cut off debate cannot be mustered. A person who filibusters is a filibusterer and the activity is filibustering.

In Play: There are plenty of apolitical uses for the second meaning of this word, especially in reference to verbal bullies: "The discussion was going well until Lotta Bolloni came in and began a filibuster that squelched everyone else." Don't forget that this word does the work of a verb as well as that of a noun: "Lotta filibustered the meeting until most of the attendees politely bowed out and went home."

Word History: Today's word set out as Dutch vrijbuiter "free-booter = pirate". English, however, preferred the more posh-sounding late 18th century French variant, flibustier, with the mysterious substitution of [l] for the original [r]. In the mid-19th century, the word changed to "filibuster," possibly under the influence of Spanish filibustero "buccaneer." The point, however, is that the word started out referring to the senatorial buccaneers who flew off on their own during debate. Later, the meaning slipped over to the process itself. Side note: The boot in free-booter is related to "booty and the phrase "(receive X) to boot," where boot originally meant "advantage, profit".