Each week here at the Australian Writers’ Centre, we dissect and discuss, contort and retort, ask and gasp at the English language and all its rules, regulations and ridiculousness. It’s a celebration of language, masquerading as a passive-aggressive whinge about words and weirdness. This week, cold shoulders and hot potatoes…
Q: Hi AWC, the word “boycott” has come up a lot recently, with regard to trade wars and so on. But where does it come from?
A: Any ideas?
Q: Some kind of cross between a boysenberry and an apricot?
A: Haha, quite a fruity suggestion. But no – it’s far simpler than that. It comes from a man named Captain Charles Boycott.
Q: Oh, yeah, I suppose that makes sense. So was he the first guy to refuse to do his shopping somewhere?
A: Actually the other way around – he was the one that others boycotted!
Q: So he owned the shop?
A: Not quite. Let’s start with the Macquarie Dictionary definition – “to abstain from buying or using: e.g. to boycott a commercial product.” It elaborates to say that people often combine as a means of intimidation or coercion.
Q: Voting with your feet!
A: That’s right.
Q: I tried that at the last election, but the man at the polling booth said my ballot was illegible and made me fill out another one.
A: Um, okay. So our story of Charles Boycott starts many decades earlier during Ireland’s Great Famine of the late 1840s. Many local farmers were forced to leave their land and British landlords swooped in, buying it up in bulk.
Q: Like Jeremy Clarkson?
A: Kind of. Anyway, these landlords didn’t live in Ireland – they just collected the rent from afar and as we fast forward about 30 years, we see a build up in tensions from the Irish tenant farmers. Higher rents and failing crops in 1879 eventually led to the “Land Wars”.
Q: Like Star Wars but with more potatoes!
A: Something like that.
Q: “May the horse be with you!”
A: Hilarious. So it came to a head in West Ireland’s county Mayo where their potato crop had been particularly bad that year.
Q: Okay, sure, but you’ve potatoes and Mayo – that’s halfway to a tasty potato salad!
A: Ignoring that. The tenant farmers were fed up with, er, not being fed, so they formed the “Irish Land League” to try and collectively bargain for lower rents from their landlord.
Q: Let me guess, the landlord was our Mr Boycott!
A: Nope. The absentee landlord was named Lord Erne, but his Mayo-based land agent was one Captain Charles Boycott.
Q: Ahhhh, okay, so Boycott was the guy employed to collect rents from the farm tenants on behalf of the landlord, yeah?
A: Exactly. Lord Erne had offered a 10% reduction in rent to account for the terrible harvest that year, but the farmers wanted 25%. Boycott not only refused this on behalf of his boss, but he started evicting tenants.
Q: This was quite the hot potato issue!
A: It certainly was. The Irish Land League was furious. But rather than get all pitchfork-and-torchy, they decided to teach Captain Boycott a lesson by first having all the workers refuse to work on his own land, meaning his harvest couldn’t be collected. And then everyone from shopkeepers to postmen refused service – completely isolating him until he returned to the negotiation table.
Q: Wow! The first ever boycott was of Boycott!
A: And it was incredibly effective – with this style of action catching on fast. And the word “boycott” moved even faster, entering newspaper stories and dictionaries in 1880 and even making it as far afield as Japan, where the term “boikotto” took hold.
Q: I feel a bit sorry for Captain Boycott. He was just doing his job. I imagine his boss didn’t suffer the same fate?
A: That’s correct. Those on the front lines in business or war have always suffered the greatest losses compared to generals or CEOs.
Q: It’s also funny to think that if his name had been Captain Charles Ploppy, we’d be “ploppying” a company’s products.
A: That’s likely true, although “boycott” is already a rather unusual word.
Q: I guess the origin story means there is no such thing as a “girlcott”.
A: Well no, it makes no sense. However, that hasn’t stopped people getting clever to use it in relation to boycotts that involve women’s rights and equality.
Q: I have also heard of someone being “blackballed” if ostracized – where does that come from? Snooker?
A: Not snooker. It pre-dates “boycott” by about 100 years and was simply named for the black coloured wooden or ivory balls that were used in secret ballots of the day to signify a “no” vote.
Q: What about an “embargo”? How does that differ from a “boycott”?
A: While a boycott can be by a voluntary decision by an individual or a collective to protest something, an “embargo” is typically enacted officially by a government at an international trading level – usually in relation to shipping and imports or exports.
Q: Is it only used for trading?
A: Well no, you can also have a “press embargo” – meaning that you may, for example, not be allowed to publish a story or review until a certain date. The key with any embargo is being prohibited from doing something – trading, publishing and so on. A boycott is kind of the opposite – it is refusing to do something.
Q: Well, this has been very enlightening. And it has me craving my Irish aunt’s 239-bean soup.
A: Why such a specific number?
Q: She said that adding any more would make it too farty! Baahhahaa
A: We should’ve ordered a joke embargo…
BONUS: Want to know even MORE words named after people? Check out this post from our archives!
Do you have a question you’d like us to explore? Email it to us today!
