A closer look
It takes a special kind of awful to have your name permanently become a synonym for social shunning. In 1880, Captain Charles Boycott was managing a wealthy estate in Ireland during a horrific agricultural crisis. When he tried to brutally evict poor tenant farmers, the local community fought back by totally icing him out. Shopkeepers wouldn't serve him, the postman wouldn't deliver his mail, and his farmhands quit. The campaign was so wildly successful that the press coined the term 'boycotting.'
