Word of the Month

Fifth Columnist

–noun
1. a group of people who act traitorously and subversively out of a secret sympathy with an enemy of their country.

[Origin] Franco sympathizers in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War: so called in allusion to a statement in 1936 that the insurgents had four columns marching on Madrid and a fifth column of sympathizers in the city ready to rise and betray it.


Benedict Arnold