filibuster

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The use of obstructionist tactics, especially prolonged speechmaking, for the purpose of delaying legislative action.
2. n. An instance of the use of this delaying tactic.
3. n. An adventurer who engages in a private military action in a foreign country.
4. v. To use obstructionist tactics in a legislative body.
5. v. To take part in a private military action in a foreign country.
6. v. To use a filibuster against (a legislative measure, for example).

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A freebooter: in history, a name distinctively applied to the West Indian bucaneers or pirates of the seventeenth century. See bucaneer.
2. n. Hence One of a band of men organized, in disregard of international law, for the purpose of invading and revolutionizing a foreign state. Specifically applied in history to the members of certain expeditions which in the middle of the nineteenth century originated in or set out from the United States against certain Spanish-American countries for the purpose of revolutionizing them. The principal of these expeditions were those led by Narciso Lopez from New Orleans against Cuba, in 1850-51, and those by William Walker from California against the Mexican state of Sonora in 1853-54, and against Nicaragua in 1855-58. Both leaders were captured and put to death, the latter after having succeeded in his second object and exercised sovereign power for some time over Nicaragua. Hence
3. n. In a legislative or other deliberative body, a member in the minority who resorts to irregular or obstructive tactics to prevent the adoption of a measure or procedure which is favored by the majority. Also filibusterer.
4. To act as a freebooter or bucaneer.
5. To obstruct legislation by undue use of the technicalities of parliamentary law or privileges, as when the minority in a legislative assembly, in order to prevent the passage of some measure obnoxious to them, endeavor to consume time or tire out their opponents by useless motions, speeches, objections, etc.

Wiktionary

1. n. A freebooter, or mercenary soldier.
2. n. US, politics A delaying tactic, especially the use of long, often irrelevant speeches given in order to delay progress or the making of a decision, especially on the floor of the US Senate.
3. n. US, politics A member of a legislative body causing such obstruction.
4. v. To take part in a private military action in a foreign country.
5. v. US, politics To use obstructionist tactics in a legislative body.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A lawless military adventurer, especially one in quest of plunder; a freebooter; -- originally applied to buccaneers infesting the Spanish American coasts, but introduced into common English to designate the followers of Lopez in his expedition to Cuba in 1851, and those of Walker in his expedition to Nicaragua, in 1855.
2. v. To act as a filibuster, or military freebooter.
3. v. political cant or slang, U.S. To delay legislation, by dilatory motions or other artifices.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. (law) a tactic for delaying or obstructing legislation by making long speeches
2. v. obstruct deliberately by delaying
3. n. a legislator who gives long speeches in an effort to delay or obstruct legislation that he (or she) opposes