[“obstruction of legislation in the U.S. Senate by prolonged speechmaking,”] filibuster: The use of the term for “a politically delaying tactic such as a long irrelevant speech or several such speeches used by politicians to delay or prevent the passage of some undesired legislation” has now virtually obliterated its former semantic equivalence to freebooter which originated in the USA in the 1880’s. A freebooter is defined as “anyone who lives by plundering others, especially a pirate.” In the middle of the nineteenth century bands of adventurers organized in the United States were in Central America and the West Indies, stirring...