Named after Captain Charles Boycott, ostracized in Ireland in 1880 — his surname became a verb within weeks and was borrowed into dozens of languages.
To withdraw from commercial or social relations with a person, organization, or country as a punishment or protest; to refuse to buy or handle goods as a protest.
From Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott (1832-1897), an English land agent in County Mayo, Ireland. During the Irish Land War of 1880, when Boycott attempted to evict tenant farmers who could not pay their rents, the Irish National Land League organized a campaign of complete social and economic ostracism against him. No one would work his fields
Captain Boycott's ostracism was so total that the British government had to import fifty Orangemen from Ulster, protected by a thousand soldiers, to harvest his crops in November 1880. The rescue mission cost far more than the harvest was worth -- but the spectacle guaranteed that Boycott's name would become immortal as a common English word adopted into virtually every major world language.