Word for the wise©
Our alphabetical journey has brought us to G" and our Word for the wise© this week comes from the Spanish word for war, guerra.
guerrilla is first found in English, and this may surprise you, in a dispatch (1809) of Wellington's during the Peninsular War. Since then, the word has become popularly associated with anti-colonial military activity. Although it suited Che's image as perfectly as a Caribbean cigar goes with a glass of rum, "guerrilla" sounded odd in the context of Northern Ireland's boggy borderlands and South Africa's broad veld, so "freedom fighter", which originated in a 1942 poem by John Lehmann, was preferred. In more recent conflicts, the "freedom" bit has been trimmed and "fighter", along with the euphemisms "militant" and "insurgent", is now preferred by those who like their ideology mixed with a bit of "rough".Talking of violent lexical evolution, the ultimate term of hostility and the one that occupies us greatly these days is terrorist. This expression of the Jacobin Reign of Terror in France was later applied to the members of the revolutionary societies in Russia, where it was especially associated with Bakunin. However, according to terrorism expert Walter Lacqueur, the title of "Godfather of Terrorism" should be awarded not to Bakunin but to a revolutionary German philosopher who predated him, Karl Heinzen. He was born in 1809, the year in which Wellington first mentioned "guerrilla", and died in 1880, the year in which the Australian bushranger/militant/insurgent Ned Kelly was hanged."
Next week, it's "H" and the colourful candidates range from "hawker" to "huckster".
