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What is the difference between mercenary and filibuster?

mercenary | filibuster |

As nouns the difference between mercenary and filibuster

is that mercenary is a person employed to fight in an armed conflict who is not a member of the state or military group for which they are fighting and whose prime or sole motivation is private gain while filibuster is a freebooter, or mercenary soldier.

As a adjective mercenary

is motivated by private gain.

As a verb filibuster is

to take part in a private military action in a foreign country.

mercenary

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Motivated by private gain.
  • * Dryden
  • For God forbid I should my papers blot / With mercenary lines, with servile pen.

    Synonyms

    * (motivated by private gain) greedy, venal

    Noun

    (mercenaries)
  • A person employed to fight in an armed conflict who is not a member of the state or military group for which they are fighting and whose prime or sole motivation is private gain.
  • Synonyms

    * See

    See also

    * soldier

    filibuster

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A freebooter, or mercenary soldier.
  • 1890' ''These duties involved prodigious physical and mental exertion, in a climate deadly to Europeans. They also involved much voyaging in waters haunted by '''filibusters''' and buccaneers. But nothing appears to daunt Labat. As for the '''filibusters , he becomes their comrade and personal friend; – he even becomes their chaplain, and does not scruple to make excursions with them.'' — Lafcadio Hearn, '' Two Years in the French West Indies.
  • (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.
  • * 2010 , "An own goal on gay rights", The Economist , 14 Oct 2010:
  • Then, last month, before the survey was finished and for reasons still unclear, the Democrats abruptly tried to attach a repeal of the law to the defence appropriations bill, a stratagem the Republicans defeated in a filibuster .
  • (US, politics) A member of a legislative body causing such obstruction.
  • Synonyms

    * (mercenary soldier) see

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To take part in a private military action in a foreign country.
  • (US, politics) To use obstructionist tactics in a legislative body.
  • * 1919 , William Roscoe Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography , Chapter 11.:
  • But as the case had dragged on interminably, and he believed, and the world believed, and the Canadians themselves knew, that they intended to filibuster and postpone as long as possible, he took the common-sense way to a settlement.