Guerrilla or Guerilla

Guerrilla or Guerilla (pronounced guh-ril-uh)

(1) A member of an irregular, usually politically motivated, armed force that combats stronger regular forces, such as the army or police.

(2) Pertaining to such fighters or their technique of warfare.

(3) In modern commercial practice, a form of marketing whereby the products of one company are promoted in a way which exploits the advertising of others.

(4) In botany, a form of vegetative spread in which the advance is from several individual rhizomes or stolons growing rapidly away from the centre, as in some clovers.

1809: From the Spanish, originally a reference to the Spanish resistance against the French.  The Spanish guerrilla (body of skirmishers, skirmishing warfare (literally "little war")) was a diminutive of guerra (war) from a Germanic source (derived from Old High German werra (strife, conflict, war)).  Guerrilla was acquired by English during the Peninsular War (1808-1814), the figurative use first noted in 1861, having been an adjective since 1811.  A survey by the New York Review of Books found guerrilla one of the words most frequently confused with another (gorilla).  The spelling guerilla has become so common it’s perhaps now established as a variant.  The attachment of guerrilla war to that conducted by civilian irregulars dates from the Peninsular War when those opposing Napoleon’s occupying forces were mostly peasants and shepherds annoyed the occupying French.  It was military historians rather than linguistic purists who for so long tried to keep the word restricted to "irregular warfare" and prevent it taking on the sense properly belonging to guerrillero "guerrilla fighter" but all anyway failed.

A guerrilla.  Note the guerrilla’s fine choice of AK47.  If buying AK47, always get Russian made original and insist it’s supplied with factory cleaning-kit.  Beware of imitations.

Guerrillas should not be confused with gorillas.  Lindsay Lohan at the King Kong premiere, Loews E-Walk and AMC Empire 25 Theaters, New York City, December 2005.