Nifong

English

Etymology 1

From German Neufang.

Proper noun

Nifong

1. A rare surname from German.

Etymology 2

• From Mike Nifong, a North Carolina District Attorney who made headlines for a controversial prosecution and his subsequent disbarment while in office for ethics violations.

Verb

Nifong (third-person singular simple present Nifongs, present participle Nifonging, simple past and past participle Nifonged)

1. To make a self-serving, politically-motivated accusation or prosecution.
   • 2007 July 28, Dave Highlands, “WE MUST NOT TOLERATE THIS CRUELTY TO ANIMALS”, in St. Petersburg Times:

     I should have expected Nifonging by liberal rags such as the Herald-Sun. I would have expected better from the Times.

   • 2007, Henry Jones, "Teacher Cleared of Having Sex with Students Sues School District," Hannity & Colmes, FOX News Network, August 27, 2007:

     We're not going away. We're going to seek justice. What happened to her, she was Nifonged. They just rushed to judgment without any notice of who her accusers were, what the accusations were. They fired her in a couple of days.

   • 2007 September 27, Ted Van Dyk, “NIFONG EXAMPLE RAISES GOOD QUESTIONS.”, in Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

     Imagine for a moment that a similar incident had taken place at a local university and that a prosecutor here had Nifonged.

   • 2007 December 15, Ralph Blumenthal, “Prosecutor in DeLay Case Says He Won’t Seek Re-election Next Year”, in The New York Times:

     “He never had any intention of finishing off his revenge on Tom DeLay and is scared to death of being Nifonged while still in office,” Ms. Flaherty said, a reference to Michael B. Nifong, the disgraced former prosecutor in the Duke University lacrosse team rape case that collapsed as groundless.

   • 2008, Campaign poster, Friends for Freda Black, April 2008, [1]:

     Don't get "Nifonged" again!

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:Nifong.