Filibuster sb.

Forms: 6 flibutor, 8–9 flibustier, 9 filibustier, fillibuster, filibuster. [The ultimate source is certainly the Du. vrijbuiter, in Kilian vrij-bueter (see FREEBOOTER). It is not clear whether the 16th c. Eng. form flibutor, of which we have only one example, was taken from Du. directly or through some foreign lang. Late in the 18th c. the F. form flibustier was adopted into Eng., and continued to be used, with occasional variations of spelling, until after the middle of the nineteenth century. About 1850–54, the form filibuster, ad. Sp. filibustero, began to be employed as the designation of certain adventurers who at that time were active in the W. Indies and Central America; and this has now superseded the earlier flibustier even with reference to the history of the 17th c.

  The mutual relation of the forms is involved in obscurity. It is possible that the corruption of fri- into fli- may be due to the influence of the word FLYBOAT (Du. vlieboot, whence F. flibot, Sp. flibote); but against this it may be urged that in our first quot. the word seems to be applied to marauders on land. In Fr. the form fribustier (which may be a corruption of Eng. freebooter) occurs in Du Tertre, Hist. des Ant-Isles (1667), III. 151; but flibustier is app. first recorded in A. O. Oexmelin (Esquemeling), Hist. des Avanturiers (1686); this writer says that it comes from the Eng. flibuster ‘corsair’; in the earlier ed. of the work in Dutch (1678) the word does not occur. It is possible on the one hand that the corrupt form of the Du. word may be of Eng. origin, and may have been taken into F. from its use in the Eng. colonies in the W. Indies; or, on the other hand, that the F. form arose in the European wars of the 16th c., and is the immediate source of Garrard’s flibutor. In any case the insertion of the s probably originated in Fr. as a mere sign of vowel-length, though from the Dictionnaire de Trévoux we learn that the s was already pronounced in 1704. In the Dict. êtymologique of Ménage (who died in 1692), s.v. flibot, the form flibutier occurs, with the explanation (doubtless erroneous) ‘ceiui qui gouverne un flibot.’ The Sp. filibustero is presumably ad. F. flibustier.]

  † 1.  gen. = FREEBOOTER. Obs. rare^–1.

a. 1587.  Garrard, The Arte of Warre (1591), 236. Merchants, victualers, artificers, and such others, as bring wares to the campe, he [the High Marshall of the Field] must take order that they be courteously & fauourably vsed, to the intent that they may vtter their wares willingly & safely, foreseeing that they be paid with good money, vsing towards them a louing countenance, & procuring them a conuoy & sufficient gard, as well for their comming as for their departing, to the intent they may with good wils, be occasioned to returne the more speedely, & so remaine altogether satisfied, without suspect of being robbed or spoiled of theeues and flibutors, for which he ought diligently & sufficiently to prouide, since that by their meanes an armie is made abundant of all things propre, commodious and necessary. Ibid., 154. Clearing and beating the hye wayes, and scowring them free from the enimie and fleebooters.

  2.  spec. a. One of a class of piratical adventurers who pillaged the Spanish colonies in the West Indies during the 17th c.

1791.  Burke, Heads for Consid., Wks. VII. 93. The Flibustriers, which about a century back, in conjunction with pirates of our nation, brought such calamities upon the Spanish colonies.

1822–56.  De Quincey, Confess. (1862), 6. This other man is a buccaneer, a pirate, a flibustier, and can have none but a forged license in his disreputable pocket.

  b.  A member of any of those bands of adventurers who between 1850 and 1860 organized expeditions from the United States, in violation of international law, for the purpose of revolutionizing certain states in Central America and the Spanish West Indies.

1854.  Lowell, Camb. 30 Y. Ago, Prose Wks. 1890, I. 85. You could not prophesy that he who was ordained to-day might not accept a colonelcy of filibusters to-morrow.

1855.  Thoreau, Let., in Atlantic Mo. (1893), LXXII. 744/1. When I think of the gold-diggers and the Mormons, the slaves and the slaveholders and the flibustiers, I naturally dream of a glorious private life.

1856.  Whittier, Panorama, The Haschish, ix.

  attrib.  1857.  Gen. P. Thompson, Audi Alteram Partem, I. ii. 5–6. The more honest European governments, to avoid a collision with the filibuster power, buy up Denmark’s claims, with an understanding that America’s share is to be paid for in the smoke. In other words, they agree to pay America’s share among them.

  c.  In wider sense: One who resembles a ‘filibuster’ (sense a or b) in his actions; now esp. one who engages in unauthorized and irregular warfare against foreign states.

1860.  W. G. Clark, Naples and Garibaldi, in Galton, Vacation Tourists, 31. The contrast which these filibusters [Garibaldians] presented to the royal troops was exceedingly striking.

1863.  Draper, Intell. Devel. Europe, iv. (1865), 95. The Greek colonists were filibusters; they seized by force the women wherever they settled.

  d.  nonce-use. A vessel employed in filibustering; a pirate craft.

1860.  Motley, Netherl. (1868), II. xviii. 455. The mouth of the Scheldt, and the dangerous shallows off the coast of Newport and Dunkirk, swarmed with their determined and well-seasoned craft, from the flybooter or filibuster of the rivers, to the larger armed vessels, built to confront every danger, and to deal with any adversary.

  3.  U.S. One who practises obstruction in a legislative assembly: see FILIBUSTER v. 2.

1889.  Boston (Mass.) Jrnl., 14 Jan., 2/2. A humiliating ‘treaty’ with a single determined filibuster.