Guerrillas

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A group of irregular armed fighters engaging in surprise attacks against an established military or occupying force
2. Independently organized combatants who utilize unconventional tactics, often in support of a political cause, to challenge authority
3. Members of a fighting force that operates in small units and relies on mobility and irregular warfare to achieve their objectives

Etymology: The Spanish word "guerrilla" is a little war, and it was coined during one of the most consequential conflicts of the Napoleonic era. Spanish "guerra" means "war," and the diminutive suffix "-illa" turns it into something like "skirmish" or "small war." The term was applied to the irregular Spanish bands who harried French forces during the Peninsular War, roughly 1808 to 1814, when Napoleon's armies occupied Spain and Portugal. The English borrowing of this Spanish term followed the British involvement in that conflict, as English-speaking readers encountered the Spanish fighters' tactics in dispatches and accounts of the campaign. The word therefore carried the sense of a small, mobile, unconventional force operating outside the regular army, which is the meaning it still holds.

Synonyms: insurgents, rebels, freedom fighters, partisans, militants

Antonyms: loyalists, patriots, conformists, supporters, defenders