guerrilla

American  

[guh-ril-uh] / gəˈrɪl ə /

Or guerilla

noun

• guerrillas
  plural

1. a member of a band of irregular soldiers that uses guerrilla warfare, harassing the enemy by surprise raids, sabotaging communication and supply lines, etc.

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adjective

1. pertaining to such fighters or their technique of warfare: guerrilla tactics.

   guerrilla strongholds;

   guerrilla tactics.

2. of or relating to an unauthorized, edgy, or disruptive version of an activity: guerilla gardening to beautify an abandoned lot.

   guerrilla filmmaking on a busy sidewalk;

   guerilla gardening to beautify an abandoned lot.

guerrilla British  

/ ɡəˈrɪlə /

noun

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

   2. ( as modifier )

      guerrilla warfare

2. 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 Compare phalanx

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• antiguerrilla
  noun
• guerrillaism
  noun
• counterguerrilla
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• guerrillas
  plural

Etymology

Origin of guerrilla

First recorded in 1800–10; from Spanish, diminutive of guerra “war” (of Germanic origin) + -illa diminutive suffix; originally in reference to the Spanish resistance against Napoleon; the name for the struggle erroneously taken as a personal noun; cf. war ¹, -elle

Explanation

If your brother says he’s going to become a guerrilla, he's not planning to become a hairy animal. Guerrilla fighters band together in a small underground army, usually trying to overcome a larger and more organized force. Guerrilla and gorilla are pronounced the same — which makes it easy to remember how to say guerrilla — but they have different meanings. In Spanish, guerra means "war" and guerrilla means “little army.” Guerrilla fighters tend to work in small groups and use ambush and sabotage to surprise stronger, more traditional forces. You might have heard of Che Guevara, a famous guerrilla fighter who was involved in the Cuban Revolution.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

guerrilla guerrillas

Born in 1954 in Masjed Soleyman in southwestern Iran and trained as a mechanical engineer, Rezaei joined al-Mansouroun, a guerrilla group fighting the Shah’s regime that became a proving ground for Iran’s future security establishment.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 11, 2026

Under the departing President Gustavo Petro, a former leftist guerrilla, the government embarked on simultaneous peace negotiations with about a dozen narco-trafficking groups to urge them to disarm and abandon drug smuggling.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026

Anti-putsch protests were put down by security forces, but activists quit the cities to form pro-democracy guerrilla groups, fighting alongside ethnic minority armies which have long resisted central rule.

From Barron's ● Jul. 1, 2026

Culture Clash — which includes members Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Sigüenza — arrived on the scene as a guerrilla sketch theater group from the San Francisco Mission District in 1984.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 24, 2026

She and the children were living with the partisan guerrilla fighters in the Belorussian forest.

From "A Thousand Sisters" by Elizabeth Wein

Nor are streets, schools or government buildings named after him, a prohibition he imposed shortly after his guerrillas overthrew Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026

The trek takes Etna across a bombed-out city and into a mountain range occupied by refugees and guerrillas.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026

For generations, these documents were little more than family heirlooms that served as painful reminders of fortunes lost after the revolution led by Fidel Castro’s bearded guerrillas.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026

Under pressure from the United States, Petro has stepped up military action against the guerrillas in recent months.

From Barron's ● Apr. 27, 2026

About three hundred troops and eight hundred Filipino guerrillas charge into the camp.

From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly

Related Words

• commando
• mercenary
• terrorist