TIL: Lua has the table of global variables exposed, so one can check if e.g. a function is defined before attempting to use it with
_G["myfunc"]~=nil_G["myfunc"]~=nilOn 19 Sept. [] he made a speech at Ennis which marked an epoch in the struggle. ‘When a man,’ he told his peasant hearers, ‘takes a farm from which another had been evicted, you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him, you must shun him in the streets of the town, you must shun him at the shop-counter, you must shun him in the fair and in the market-place, and even in the house of worship, by leaving him severely alone, by putting him into a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his kind as if he was a leper of old—you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed; and you may depend upon it, if the population of a county in Ireland carry out this doctrine, that there will be no man so full of avarice, so lost to shame, as to dare the public opinion of all right-thinking men within the county, and to transgress your unwritten code of laws.’ The method of intimidation thus recommended by Parnell was at once adopted in its full rigour by the peasant members of all branches of the league, and was soon known as ‘boycotting,’ after the name of its first important victim, Captain Boycott of Lough Mask, co. Galway.(from Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Vol. 43, transcribed on Wikisource, pg. 327/328) In German the spelling is adjusted ("Boykott"), so clearly that it was a specific name was lost at that point. found via Naomi O'Leary