Word of the Day

Vidkun Quisling declared himself Norway's government and became a common noun

The Times of London had a word for Vidkun Quisling within ten days of the radio broadcast in which he claimed Norway's government for himself on the morning of the German invasion.

4 min read2026-07-28

quisling noun /ˈkwɪz.lɪŋ/

A traitor who collaborates with an occupying or hostile power, especially one installed by that power to govern in its place.¹

Quisling declared himself Norway's government by radio

On the morning of 9 April 1940, hours after German troops landed at Oslo, Vidkun Quisling sat down at a radio station in the capital and broadcast that Norway would not resist the invasion and that he was now head of government.² He repeated the broadcast two hours later, adding that any refusal to cooperate would bring "the most serious consequences for the individuals concerned."² No one had elected him and no government had appointed him. It lasted six days. German occupation authorities, who had not ordered the stunt, forced him out on 15 April and installed an administrative council in his place.² Quisling did not govern again until February 1942, when the Germans reinstalled him as minister president of a puppet administration.²

The word outran the man

Within ten days, on 19 April 1940, the Times of London ran a leader remembered as "Quislings Everywhere" — possibly not literally the word's first appearance in print, but the one that stuck. The Times is widely reported to have declared that "[Major] Quisling has added a new word to the English language," already "a plain synonym for 'traitor,'" and that to writers the name was "a gift from the gods," its sound "slippery and tortuous."³⁴ Merriam-Webster's own history of the word agrees on the speed: "Before the end of 1940, quisling was being used generically in English to refer to any traitor."¹ Winston Churchill made the coinage permanent. On 12 June 1941, addressing Allied representatives at St James's Palace, he told them that "a vile race of Quislings ... is hired to fawn upon the conqueror, to collaborate in his designs and to enforce his rule upon their fellow countrymen."⁵ Ten days later, broadcasting on the Soviet-German war, he reached for the same phrase again, damning "that vile race of Quislings who make themselves the tools and agents of the Nazi regime against their fellow-countrymen."⁶ Quisling was still more than four years from a courtroom when the word built from his name had already outgrown him.

Erdoğan needed a word for a specific kind of traitor

Plain "traitor," in Merriam-Webster's own entry, covers anyone who "betrays another's trust" or "commits treason" — a spouse, a partner, a country, no outside power required.⁷ "Quisling" keeps the detail "traitor" drops: it names a traitor who fronts for an occupier, installed by it or working to please it, not a traitor acting alone. That narrower job is what survives in the word's current use. Merriam-Webster's own citation file shows how far it has traveled from Norway. In 2023 the Los Angeles Times quoted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan calling his election rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu a "quisling ... in cahoots with the West." In 2025 Axios quoted the FTC chair pledging that a reshaped panel would not be "stacked with pro-industry quislings." In 2026 a Hartford Courant columnist warned of "a Congress in which quislings claim a majority."⁸ None of the people named are under foreign occupation. Each is accused of taking direction from a power outside their own country or party and fronting for it against their own side, the same shape Quisling gave the word from a radio studio in 1940.

Quisling declared himself Norway's government by radio

The word outran the man

Erdoğan needed a word for a specific kind of traitor

Sources