Stonewalling

Posted by James Briggs on September 29, 2004

In Reply to: Stonewalling posted by Word Camel on September 29, 2004

: : I checked above to see if this had been raised or not. Specifically it hadn't, but it was mentioned in relation to another query "people in glass houses, etc...".

: : I cut and paste this from that thread... "STONEWALL JACKSON. Nickname for a Civil War general who stood like a stonewall before the enemy."

: : All I'm asking here is, is this the origin of the term stonewalling or is there more to it?

: I don't have access to the OED, but I've looked around and so far it doesn't seem like think there's much more to it than that.

: I have also seen "stonewalling" used as a pun in the process of describing the Stonewall Riots. The riots happened in Greenwich Village in 1969. They started when police raided the Stonewall bar. Instead of dispursing the crowd threw coins at the police, who regularly shook down the bars for "gayola" (a variation of "payola") to look the other way. The riots went on for five days and are generally seen as a watershed in the development of the gay rights movement.

The term has long been used in cricket to describe a batsman who merely defends doggedly and makes no effort to score. This use must also relate to actual 'stone walls'.