stonewall To be uncooperative, obstructive, or evasive; to refuse to comply or cooperate with. To be the stone wall into which an investigator or questioner must crash and go no further.

This term became the everlasting sobriquet of the Confederate General Thomas Jackson for the way in which his troops held their position at the First Battle of Bull Run when General Bernard E. Bee shouted to his wavering men, “Look, there is Jackson standing like a stone wall!”

The word came into widespread contemporary use from the testimony of former White House Counsel John Dean during the 1973 Watergate hearings. Dean quoted President Nixon as ordering his men in to “stonewall” investigations, meaning to resist inquiries through vagueness or a lack of cooperation. Nixon’s words, captured on his own tapes, were more to the point: “I don’t give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover-up, or anything else.”

An additional facet of “Stonewall” with a capital S: on June 28, 1969, in New York City, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. Instead of submitting to what they considered harassment, the patrons fought back: the “Stonewall Rebellion” is now considered a watershed in the history of the gay rights movement.

The term in use, by Daniel Coleman in “How to Talk to Your Husband,” Good Housekeeping, October 1, 1995:

Stonewalling, in fact, is the male refuge of last resort: In his study, Gottman found that 85 percent of stonewalling was done by husbands. Going blank and withdrawing sends a powerful, unnerving message of icy distance and distaste…

And, of course, the political context, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 4, 1997:

Has Mr. Gingrich learned nothing from President Bill Clinton, whose administration has been characterized by successively stonewalling every allegation, even when telling the whole truth from the start would be less damaging?

And by John Gregory Dunne in the New Yorker, April 15, 1996:

That cops sometimes lie on the witness stand is a fact that prosecutors will admit only after they leave the public sector: the name both they and cops have for it is “testilying,” and it generally involves either stonewalling or fudging evidence to make a good case better.

From Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Allusions.