Word of the Day - Quisling

The Word of the Day for July 28 is:

quisling \KWIZ-ling\ noun

: one who commits treason : collaborator

Example sentence: The country is ruled by a puppet government composed of quislings.

See a map of "quisling " in the Visual Thesaurus.

Did you know? Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian army officer who in 1933 founded Norway's fascist party. In December 1939, he met with Adolf Hitler and urged him to occupy Norway. Following the German invasion of April 1940, Quisling served as a figurehead in the puppet government set up by the German occupation forces, and his linguistic fate was sealed. Before the end of 1940, "quisling" was being used generically in English to refer to any traitor. Winston Churchill, George Orwell, and H. G. Wells used it in their wartime writings. Quisling lived to see his name thus immortalized, but not much longer. He was executed for treason soon after the liberation of Norway in 1945.