guerrilla

UK/ɡəˈɹɪlə/US/ɡəˈɹɪlə/

nounC1Common in everyday speech and writing · #8,065 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: guerrillas

A guerrilla is a fighter in a small irregular band. Not an army — a few dozen people who know the ground.

The tactics are hit and run, and the whole method depends on avoiding a set-piece battle against a stronger force. The word is Spanish and means little war, and it entered English during the Peninsular War against Napoleon. Note the double r and double l, which almost everybody gets wrong. Marketing borrowed the word for guerrilla advertising, meaning cheap, surprising and unofficial campaigns.

Definitions of guerrilla

1nounguerrillaA member of a small irregular armed group using hit-and-run tactics.C1
“The guerrillas controlled the hills for a decade.”

Also accepted in games: guerilla

Where it comes from

A guerrilla is a little war. Spanish guerrilla is the diminutive of guerra, war, so the word named the kind of fighting before it ever named the fighter.

Spanish
guerrilla
English, today
guerrilla

Built from

guerra · Spanish — war

Borrowed from Spanish guerrilla. Spanish guerrilla, diminutive of guerra (“war”), coined during the Peninsular War.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 7 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

guerrilla in the wild

In the 6th century BC, Sun Tzu proposed the use of guerrilla-style tactics in The Art of War.
Guerrilla warfare
For guerrilla campaigns to be successful, companies generally do not need to spend large amounts of money, but they need to have imagination, energy and time.
Guerrilla marketing
Therefore, guerrilla marketing has the potential to be effective for small businesses, especially if they are competing against bigger companies.
Guerrilla marketing
In fact, it owes so much to the early graffiti movement, that guerrilla art is still referred to as 'post-graffiti art' in the United States.
Guerrilla art
The production of guerrilla art is focused on cause and effect, not the material piece itself.
Guerrilla art

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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