# The meaning of "witch hunt"
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [March 18, 2005, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123 "2005-03-18T07:54:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/1 "2005-03-18T07:54:04Z")
I’ve seen the term _witch hunt_ being used at SD a lot lately. I have my own idea of what it means. If I’m right, then it is being frequently misused. Would someone clarify this term and fight our ignorance please?
Yes, I could look it up and post a definition, but I’d rather hear Doper input.
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### Author:  [@Freejooky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freejooky)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/2 "2005-03-18T08:17:10Z")
It refers to a state of suspicion in which a group of people begin turning on each other and assuming/imagining/accusing each other of being the enemy/evil.
After, of course, the era of colonial times when everyone thought their neighbor was a witch and many innocents were executed over it. Or the McCarthey era, where suddenly everyone thought everyone else was a communist.
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### Author:  [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/3 "2005-03-18T14:11:25Z")
I’m going to disagree with **Freejooky** , somewhat.
A witch hunt is a process where bad things are blamed upon some unknown person or persons, and then all efforts are turned to find that person who’s to blame. Whether there’s any rational reason to blame the actions of a person, or not. Eventually a victim, or scapegoat, or ‘witch’ is found, and punished, and that supposedly solves the problem. Often the reason for the witch hunt has to do with distracting attention from other problems, or to remove a nuisance for the Powers That Be. (Or would-be PTB.)
And if **Freejooky** thinks that Colonial witch hunts were bad, don’t look at the witch hunting crazes in Europe from about 1500 to 1800. None of the witches in Salem were killed after confessing - in fact, all the people who confessed were eventually released by the governor. Whereas, in the European witch hunts - confession was followed by burning at the stake. And still people confessed, knowing their fate, because the tortures used to get that confession were so terrible.
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### Author:  [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/4 "2005-03-18T14:28:48Z")
I would define a witch hunt as a phase during which the standards to convict (legally or otherwise) a person of a serious wrong-doing are continously lowering and, as a result, accusations are steadily rising, and th process ends at a point where anyone is suceptable to the accusation. I would go on to say that “witch hunt” also connotes, to a lesser degree, that the serious wrong-doing itself is a bugbear–it doesn’t really exist.
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### Author:  [@Scott\_Plaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scott_Plaid)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/5 "2005-03-18T14:34:28Z")
You take someone out to the woods, give them a magic stick and…
Oh, I’m sorry, that’s a snark hunt. Don’t do it. It’s liable to get that person eaten by a grue, for they will most likely seek shelter in a cave.
I haven’t seen McCarthy mentioned here, thus I “boldly” steal something from a [dead women’s web page](http://members.tripod.com/~HazelWolf/):
> [@Hazel Wolf](#):
>
> I understand you have been studying the McCarthy period, which has also been described as a witch hunt. I looked witch hunt up in the Webster College dictionary where it is in part defined like this: “An investigation usually conducted with much publicity, supposedly to uncover subversive political activity, disloyalty, etc., but really to harass and weaken the entire political opposition.”
> I think that is a fair description of the McCarthy witch hunt. It was indeed for the purpose of weakening the entire political opposition to the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Since that country’s revolution in 1919 which changed its capitalist economy into a socialist economy, the capitalist countries, particularly the United States and Great Britain plotted to overturn the new Soviet government, first by military intervention, in which they were joined by the French, and failing that, by trade boycotts.
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### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/6 "2005-03-18T17:37:22Z")
A witch hunt usually consists of the following properties, if one is to make it consistent with the actual european with hunts:
1. It’s a hunt for a threat that either does not exist or is absurdly exaggerated,
2. In which people are hysterically accused based on irrelevant or nonexistent evidence,
3. Usually predominantly taken from a particular group of people,
4. Focused on people who do not conform with society as a whole,
5. In a way whereby it is made logically impossible to deny guilt, and
6. Maybe most importantly, where anyone who CRITICIZES the witch hunt is suspected as being guilty for having criticized it.
During the actual witch hunts in Europe (the American versions weren’t one ten thousandth as bad) every town would routinely torture and execute dozens of people a year, usually women and girls. If a woman was accused of being a witch, and had any children, the children would be tortured and burned with her. It was quite common for children as young as seven, eight or nine years old to be broken on the wheel (having your limbs broken in multiple places and then intertwined in a wagon wheel) or simply burned at the stake. The prettiest girl in town was usually burned, since being attractive meant Satan was using you to pervert men. The number of women who were tortured and burned is staggering, possibly as many as a hundred thousand. (Some people toss around millions, which is absurd.)
Furthermore, anyone who suggested that witches and demons don’t exist or that things were getting out of hand was a suspect and was usually tortured and executed.
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### Author:  [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/7 "2005-03-18T18:10:02Z")
_ding_ We have a winner! Thank you for playing, **RickJay**
(and thanks for being more complete than I managed to be.)
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### Author:  [@Eran\_of\_Arcadia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eran_of_Arcadia)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/8 "2005-03-18T19:17:50Z")
Although nowadays, it often means “criticizing me for doing something”.
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/9 "2005-03-18T19:24:26Z")
> [@OtakuLoki](#):
>
> _ding_ We have a winner! Thank you for playing, **RickJay**
>
> (and thanks for being more complete than I managed to be.)
Yeeees…Methinks perhaps a bit TOO complete :dubious:
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/10 "2005-03-18T19:25:34Z")
> [@](#):
>
> every town would routinely torture and execute dozens of people a year, usually women and girls
Nitpick:
“Every town” should be nuanced with the declaration “every town in those areas where witch hunting was a frequent occurrence.” There were many regions of Europe that were never overtaken by the witch hunt craze. It actually followed a band extending outward, East and West, from the Rhine valley up to Switzerland and over just a bit into Northern Italy, with portions of far Eastern France affected. There were also pockets of witch hunting in England and Scotland and a few other scattered locations throughout Europe, but it was never a European pandemic. Even in these areas, witch hunting was not a consistent practice throughout the period, with various frenzies waxing and waning. Sometimes it lasted for a decade or more; sometimes it was s single months-long event that was not repeated in a particular location.
With the inconsistent nature of the practice, it often took different forms in different locations. In some places, it was the rich burgers who were targeted. In others it concentrated on men, rather than women. (Women were definitely targeted more often than men, but in a ratio of 5:1 or 3:1, not 100:1.)
( **RickJay** ’s general overview of what the word has come to mean and its _general_ etymology is spot on.)
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### Author:  [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/11 "2005-03-18T19:32:47Z")
> [@msmith537](#):
>
> Yeeees…Methinks perhaps a bit TOO complete :dubious:
:eek: You’re right!!
_ **He’s a WITCH!! GET HIM!!** _
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### Author:  [@Dan\_Norder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dan_Norder)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/12 "2005-03-18T19:41:23Z")
Actually, yeah, I think a bit too specific. I believe the idea that females were especially singled out in the European crazes is vastly overstated and that studies have shown a more even gender split. And if you think of the hidden reason many people suggest for the accusations after they had been going – the ability to legally seize the property of the accused – that part at least would have to be more male-targeted.
And, as pointed out above, it wasn’t nearly asa omnipresent as described there. It came in patches and flare ups, not some regular continuous thing.
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### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/13 "2005-03-18T20:15:37Z")
> [@Giraffe](#):
>
> :eek: You’re right!!
>
> _ **He’s a WITCH!! GET HIM!!** _
I’ll turn you into a newt.
I did mean to add a comment that witch hunting was popular in some places and not in others but somehow I just forgot to add it in there. I know, for instance, that it never really caught on in Ireland, but was way popular in many places in what is now Germany.
I also made it sound like all witches were burned, which is not the case; many were hanged. NO witches in Salem were burned.
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### Author:  [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/14 "2005-03-18T20:21:59Z")
A pattern of behavior that doesn’t exactly fit the above definitions of “witch hunt” can still be despicable.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/15 "2005-03-18T20:24:44Z")
**Rick’s** covered everything I could think of, too. Great definition!
And I agree with **Zoe** that it’s being misused a lot as of late. Everyone knows that witch hunts are bad, so if you accuse someone of engaging in a witch hunt, surely everyone will agree with you that they’re doing something terrible, right?
Hey, wait a second. That’s ironic!
Daniel
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### Author:  [@Scott\_Plaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scott_Plaid)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/16 "2005-03-18T20:27:17Z")
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> NO witches in Salem were burned.
Oh. So they were just [hanged?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_Witch_Trials#Executed)
I guess it’s ok then.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/17 "2005-03-18T20:38:43Z")
> [@Scott\_plaid](#):
>
> Oh. So they were just [hanged?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_Witch_Trials#Executed)
>
> I guess it’s ok then.
**Scott** , honey, what were the three words in **rick’s** post immediately prior to the ones you quoted?
Daniel
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### Author:  [@Scott\_Plaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scott_Plaid)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/18 "2005-03-18T20:47:31Z")
I need to start adding more smilies. :smack:
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### Author:  [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2005, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/19 "2005-03-19T06:26:32Z")
Actually, I suspect that no witches were hanged in Salem either – only unfortunate victims of false accusations. Wasn’t there one person who was crushed with stones?
Thanks for your responses, especially **Rick Jay’s**. And I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one to agree that it is being misused.
I am terribly uneducated about European history and the information about the witch hunts there is very interesting to me. Thanks for taking the time to discuss it.
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### Author:  [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2005, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-meaning-of-witch-hunt/295123/20 "2005-03-19T09:06:08Z")
At Salem, **Zoe** , the witch craze there was **very** atypical, compared to the European witch hunts. IIRC there was none of the shennengins with property rights that followed a witch’s condemnation in Europe. Certainly **all** the persons who confessed to witchcraft were pardoned by the governor after he reviewed some of the transcripts - they’d only been imprisoned, after all. The 19 persons hanged were hanged after convictions in court of witchcraft, but still proclaiming innocence. The other man who died was killed in the process of ‘testing.’ (Now isn’t there a nice, bloodless word for it.) His ‘test’ consisted of placing him under a large board, and gradually adding large stones to the board until he confessed to being a witch. He lasted two days before dying. I haven’t found the cause of death for the other four persons killed in the craze. (And don’t feel motivated for an indepth search, sorry.) I suspect they died in prison, but not as an action of the court.
Compare this to the European trials where property owned by convicted witches was confiscated by the Church or the local politicians, depending upon what authority the trial was convened under. In addition to the financial benefits to the accusers, the social benefits can’t be underestimated: Have a troublesome poor quarter? Try a few witches, and the peons will knuckle under again, aware that sticking out to the powers that be can bring you to the rack for the most spurious of reasons.
During the Thirty Years War, while the Protestant and Catholic forces ravaged Germany, the chaos of all the persons uprooted by the see-sawing religious leadership changes (At the time, the Holy Roman Empire was following the principal of _cuius regio, eius religio_, where the faith of the prince of each principality would be the faith of the people, unless they chose to leave.) created a huge underclass of persons who had, for one reason or another, become stateless persons. In some areas this underclass would grow to a signfigant fraction of the total population. With the murder, rapine, enforced conscription, and lawlessness the armies of the time left behind, these displaced persons were mostly women, children or elderly. All of whom were easily controlled if they became too vocal a problem, by burning a few malcontents. After all, it’s not like they were _real_ people. Or even locals.
The Thirty Years War is one of those incidents that leaves any faithful person wondering just how a loving god could have allowed it to happen. _sigh_
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