Meanings
- dateduncountablePiracy, freebooting; the waging of unauthorised war.
- USuncountableThe practice of forcefully and unauthorisedly acquiring control of foreign land.
[…] Doc furtively kicked him in the side of the leg, to remind him that the main reason they were there was to hush up even the faintest suspicions that filibusterism was flaring up again in Central America.
1986, J. D. Hardin, Murder on the Rails, page 302 more examples
All this was simply weakness; but in turning from the conduct of the Finances by the administration, to consider its management of Filibusterism, we pass from the consideration of acts of mere debility to the consideration of acts which have a color of duplicity in them. On the Filibusters, as on the Finances, the First Annual Message of the President was outspoken and forcible. It characterized the past and proposed doings of William Walker and his crew, as the common sense and common conscience of the world had already characterised them, as nothing short of piracy and murder.
1858 April, “Mr. Buchanan's Administration”, in The Atlantic Monthly, volume 1, number 6Conservatism has come to mean, with us, filibusterism, the acquisition of our neighbor's land, the extension of negro slavery, the reopening of the slave trade, and placing under the ban of society every publicist who raises his voice against such conservatism.
1859, “Politics at Home and Abroad”, in Orestes Augustus Brownson, editor, Brownson's Quarterly Review, volume 4, page 214 - uncountableThe practice of delaying legislation by filibuster or other obstructive tactics.
Origin
Cite this entry
filibusterism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/filibusterism
“filibusterism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/filibusterism. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “filibusterism,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/filibusterism.
Source: filibusterism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.