Today's word exists in English too, but it comes from the Scandinavian languages – in more ways than one.

Today's word exists in English too, but it comes from the Scandinavian languages – in more ways than one. The big political fuss this week (although there have been a few of them) has been over top Sweden Democrat Richard Jomshof calling Aftonbladet's political editor, Anders Lindberg, en quisling. This word is the same in English ("a quisling," "many quislings"), but that may or may not help you with the meaning, which is "traitor." It goes a bit deeper than that, though, given the historical context. The word quisling comes from the last name of a Norwegian army officer named Vidkun Quisling who started a fascist party in Norway in the 1930s, explicitly modelled on Germany's Nazi party. In 1933, an opposition politician in Norway used Quisling's last name as a plural Norwegian noun to describe Quisling's followers. As the Nazis consolidated power in Germany, Vidkun Quisling supported a Nazi takeover of Norway – and once that takeover successfully happened, in 1940, Quisling was head of Norway's puppet government. To be en quisling is therefore somewhat more than to be a traitor – it signifies almost a commitment to traitorous principles, and a particularly nasty sort of collaboration with a particularly nasty enemy. The word took off in English after a 1940 Times editorial headlined "Quislings Everywhere" not only established the word as an English noun meaning "traitor" or "collaborator with the enemy," but waxed eloquent on what a useful new noun it was: "To writers, the word quisling is a gift from the gods," they wrote. "If they had been ordered to invent a new word for traitor... they could hardly have hit upon a more brilliant combination of letters. Aurally it contrives to suggest something at once slippery and tortuous." In Swedish, the dictionary defines en quisling as specifically "a person who traitorously collaborates with an occupying enemy." The plural – if you, god forbid, encounter a group of traitors plotting to let a foreign power take over – is quislingar.