boycott

Etymology

From the name of Captain Charles C. Boycott (1832–1897), an English land agent in Ireland,^[1][2] who in 1880 was ostracized by the Irish Land League for refusing to lower his tenants' rents.^[3][4] The word was used as both noun and verb from 1880,^[3][5] and was quickly adopted by newspapers in other languages, as far off as Japanese.^[3] The family name is from a place in England.^[3]

References

1. [1] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
2. [1] Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
3. [1] [2] [3] [4] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. [1] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
5. [1] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press