greenmail (GREEN-mayl) noun

The practice of buying a large quantity of a company's stock as a hostile
takeover measure, and then selling it to the company at a higher price.

[From green (money) + mail (as in blackmail).]

How did everyone else react to Anu’s colourful language yesterday? I just don’t buy this one.

Greenmail to me signifies coercion of corporate will by the impact of ecological pressure – it stands in the ranks of green~ words referring to ecological matters, with the obvious suffix from analogy with blackmail. An example would be when Shell were forced to cease their planned scuppering of the Piper Alpha drilling platform in the north sea, due to the popular outrage stirred up by Greenpeace.

Greenmail in the sense Anu found can only work, after all, in the USA which as far as I know is about the only country in the world to use the same colour for all its banknotes (whatever their value) and thus have gained some sense of, er, currency for the link of money and colour.

Dear Mav: What colour applied to you would make you stupid, now that heavy metals are banned from kid's paints and crayons? I was reminded of this resterday reading History of England, in which Macaulay tells of Charles II having a hobby of performing chemical experiments, including mercury. Macaulay did not perceive the possible relevance of this in the King's subsequent personality change and downfall. I suspect he was "Mad as a Hatter."

well, i thought blue rinse was a bit off too.. its "blue haired" ladies, who are definately older than "ladies of a certain age"* (who are most definately older than me!)

Wednesday traffic is always the worst, since the city is filled with blue haired ladies in for a broadway matinee.

and as to Dr. bills question...since mercury oxide is cinnabar, should we color you red? or yellow, since there is an other mercury oxide compount that is yellow.. the second is used 3 places that i know of, one for an antibotic eye ointment, (no longer available in US) and for paint pigment, especially a rust inhibiting undercoat, or as artist colors..

(but the real question is, why would we want to color Maverick stupid? )

*and is ladies (or a woman) of a certain age used else where? its a fairly common phrase in NY.

There is more stupidity in the universe than hydrogen, and it has a longer shelf life.
-Frank Zappa (The Yellow Shark)

Googling "greenmail" gives about 3,300 hits; "greenmail greenpeace" gives 48. This is complicatd somewhat by the fact that there is an email service that calls itself greenmail (No endorsement implied nor should none be inferred) 2000. It would seem that mav's interpretation is definitely secondary. One of the 48 even has the line "gives a whole new meaning to greenmail".

Never underestimate the power of the US$

Try googling wider: greenmail ecology

here is the entry from the 1986 W3 Addenda:

greenmail - payment by a corporation of a price above market value for shares of a stock held by a stockholder threatening a hostile takeover; also, the demanding of such a payment

it may have subsequently been co-opted by the (anti)green folks.

77 hits. Most of them seem to be either random pairings of the words (e.g. the CV that mentioned two papers, one titled The Political Ecology of Takeovers... and one Drafting an Effective Greenmail Prohibition) or references to an email service or, in one case, the Queens Green Party's newsletter, Greenmail.

The one explicit definition that matches mav's concept was When poor people object to pollution, their "benefactors" argue that they have to make a choice between clean air and water, and jobs. The term for this is "greenmail."

The term is in reasonably common usage. Given that, it's notable that Faldage finds, after googling, that "one explicit definition matches."

If out of so many google-hits only one supports this usage of the term, I'd conclude that that one is flat wrong. My logic is what tswum just now expressed in another thread: I don't believe that...in spite of what one misguided web site says.

Although I must also agree with mav that such a difiniton would make a great deal of sense.

yeahbut!®

the difference is not just academic since I have *definitely read the phrase used in the context I recall. I shall ask at the Collins Bank of English to see what that corpora has, for interest. It could be a transatlantic divide, after all.

>It could be a transatlantic divide, after all.

if so, it's a recent transferral. here's OED2 (fwiw):
Stock Market (orig. U.S.).


[f. green a. + black)mail; cf. green n. 7d.]
The practice of purchasing enough shares in a firm or trading company to threaten a take-over, thereby forcing the owners to buy them back at a premium in order to retain control of the business. Freq. attrib.
1983 National Law Jrnl. (U.S.) 21 Mar. 23/4 Corporations are scurrying to combat a perceived threat from those professional investors who practice ‘greenmail’—putting pressure on a company to get a buy-out for cash. 1984 Daily Tel. 16 June 17 The Disney settlement is the latest and biggest in a recent spate of ‘greenmail’ deals. 1984 Times 15 Oct. 17/6 Two leading companies in the United States are introducing schemes to help ward off the threat of unwelcome takeover bids or attempts of ‘greenmail’. 1986 N.Y. Times 13 Nov. d1/1 CPC may have revived ‘greenmail’ by moving to get Ronald O. Perelman off its back, some Wall Street players contend.

I believe I have read that a strategy used to stop greenmail is called a "poison pill". That's a term I love used in this context.

Poison Pill

A strategy used by corporations to discourage the
hostile takeover by another company by making it's
stock less attractive to the acquirer.

No endorsement implied nor should none be inferred
So, Faldage, am I to assume that you own stock in greenmail, but have mixed feelings about its usefulness?

It was not long after I was ordained in the Episcopal Church that I learned (from senior priests) the meaning of the term LOLWBH ... which is to say "Little Old Ladies With Blue Hair."

Dear Father Steve: I still remember the first time I saw blue hair, seventy years ago. My home-room teacher, Miss McGrory, switched from gray to pale blue tint that startled me enough I almost dropped my armload of books. But on her it really did look good. But in the main, Marilyn Monroe was right when she said "Only the young dye good."

am I to assume...?

You may assume what you will, my dear tg. I neither confirm nor deny.

Dear WW: I remember very clearly seeing it attributed to her, but since I can't find it on the Internet, I am beginning to think the attribution may have been a lie.

Accorden ta me tedasaurus (2002 edition)
Green mail refers ta the thousands of St Paddy's day cards sent annually around the world.
Accorden ta me dictionary it's a little man from outer space
but me Mammy says that all men are green mails cos they don't know nothin.