sabotage

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   deliberate damage, obstruction, or disruption intended to weaken an activity, organization, or opponent

   Investigators found evidence of sabotage in the damaged control system.

2. 2
   verb

   to deliberately damage, obstruct, or undermine something so that it cannot succeed

   The conspirators planned to sabotage the railway before the troops arrived.

Simplified etymology

Sabotage first appeared in English in the first decade of the 20th century in reference to a strike in Paris. It is associated with French sabot, a wooden clog traditionally worn by peasants and other workers, and with 19th-century French workers destroying machines and tools while opposing new technology.

Borrowed from French sabotage, from saboter, 'to botch, work clumsily, or damage,' a verb related to sabot, 'wooden shoe.' The word first referred to deliberate inefficiency or damage in an industrial dispute and later broadened to covert disruption in war, politics, and ordinary life.

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