To Stage a Boycott would mean withdrawing from social or commercial arrangements as either a protest or punishment and the phrase is one of the few to eminate from Southern Ireland.

In the 1870's Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott, an Englishman, was working as land agent for Lord Earne at Loughmask in County Mayo. In September 1880 a campaign, organised by the Irish Land League, was calling for a reform of the system of landholding and protesting tenants demanded Captain Boycott initiate a substantial reduction in their rents. Boycott refused, even ordering anyone in arrears be evicted, and Charles Parnell, the President of the Land League, made a speech calling for everybody in the local community, not only Boycott's tenants, to refuse to have anything to do with the unpopular agent.

The result was that labourers refused to work for him, shop & inn keepers declined to serve either him or his family and even the postal staff refused to deliver his letters. Boycott had to go to the expense of having his food brought in, under guard, from great distances away and employed 50 labourers from as far away as Northern Ireland for the harvest, all protected by a guard of nine hundred.

This action by the locals was so successful, and aroused so much passion, (it was even reported in The Times of London during November 1880) that the Land League called upon all Irish men and women to treat similar landlords, or their agents, like 'Boycott'. Within weeks the phrase was adopted by newspapers around Europe and subsequently worldwide.

By the time the Captain died in 1887, after fleeing back to England, the word had become a standard part of the English language.