Nimbyism

There's always more words to learn in the English language. Since I was a teenager and used to sit down and study the dictionary, I've always been interested in expanding my vocabulary. Recently, when watching a video on the negative effects of wind turbines, I heard mention of a word that I hadn't heard before. I wasn't sure how to spell it but it was either   or nimbyism. Turns out it was the latter and the word is an acronym whose letters derive from the phrase not in my back yard.

Here is a definition from dictionary.com:

nimbyism: opposition by local citizens to the locating in their neighbourhood of a civic project, as a jail, garbage dump, or drug rehabilitation centre, that, though needed by the larger community, is considered unsightly, dangerous, or likely to lead to decreased property values.

The term nimby can be used to describe a person who practised nimbyism:

nimby: a person who resists unwanted development, such as manufacturing plants, prisons, power companies, or chemical companies in his or her own neighbourhood or town. 

The term has its own entry in Wikipedia where the observation is made that the term is usually applied to opponents of a development, implying that they have narrow, selfish, or myopic views. Its use is often pejorative. It also states that the acronym, as opposed to the phrase for which it stands, seems to have into use around 1980.

Figure 1

It's the sort of concept that lends itself to humour, as the cartoons in Figure 1 and Figure 2 illustrate.

Figure 2