Home UK English red-bait

Meaning of red-bait in English:

red-bait

verb

[with object]informal North American

  • Harass or persecute (someone) on account of known or suspected communist sympathies.

    • ‘hospital management has tried to discredit the union by red-baiting them’
    • ‘for many years I was the target of red-baiting’
    • ‘the red-baiting chairman of the Senate committee’
    • ‘Though stopping short of overtly red-baiting him, the newspaper continued to refer to his earlier associations with leftist organizations.’
    • ‘You may have seen a letter I emailed earlier regarding his red-baiting me in a public forum of almost 100 people.’
    • ‘The newspaper published a string of editorials and comments, red-baiting the organisers.’
    • ‘Of course the Republicans and the corporate media are going to red-bait me.’
    • ‘Is it red-baiting to point out that the group is red?’
    • ‘In the old days, there was a word for this sort of thing, two actually: red-baiting.’
    • ‘The renewed attention to the provincial opposition, and the coverage of its strategic debates, is predictably replete with thinly veiled cynicism, red-baiting, and general anti-socialist sentiment.’
    • ‘After experiencing official restrictions during World War II and red-baiting during the Cold War, they drew back from close governmental cooperation.’
    • ‘In the senate he attacked Joe McCarthy for red-baiting and stood up for civil rights.’
    • ‘Far from being red-baited for his past identification with socialism, he was given the stamp of approval and included in all of the candidates' debates televised across the state.’
    • ‘By the by, Dr Spencer Fitzgibbon, if you're going to red-bait at least research your terms.’
    • ‘Fear is always ugly, just as it was when the liberals rushed out to red-bait and denounce the left in the McCarthy years.’
    • ‘Also, the make-up of union membership has shifted - more minorities, more women, more new immigrants, and more workers for whom the old Cold War red-baiting is not even a distant memory.’
    • ‘The setting is early ‘50s Hollywood, a time of red-baiting and gay-bashing.’
    • ‘But those were days of paranoia and red-baiting - the McCarthy era - and the right-wing sleaze merchants went to work on John Henry with outlandish accusations that he was a communist.’
    • ‘Race issues and red-baiting added color to the mix.’
    • ‘The author notes a symbiosis between Cold War events and southern red-baiting but never fully explores these connections.’
    • ‘As a practical matter, only those who explicitly oppose such coexistence with capitalist politics are generally subjected to red-baiting.’
    • ‘When confronted with a few probing questions, Bolton treats the journalist as an outright political opponent, resorting immediately to his stock-in-trade - provocative red-baiting.’
    oppression, victimization, maltreatment, ill treatment, mistreatment, abuse, ill usage, discrimination, tyranny, tyrannization, punishment, torment, torture

noun

South African

  • A large sea squirt which is a popular bait with sea anglers.

    Pyura stolonifera, class Ascidiaceae