Commando

A commando is a combatant, or operative of an elite light infantry or special operations force, specially trained for carrying out raids and operating in small teams behind enemy lines. Originally "a commando" was a type of combat unit, as opposed to an individual in that unit. In other languages, commando and kommando denote a "command", including the sense of a military or an elite special operations unit. In the militaries and governments of most countries, commandos are distinctive in that they specialize in unconventional assault on high-value targets. In English, to distinguish between an individual commando and a commando unit, the unit is occasionally capitalized. From an ancient lingual perspective the term commando derives from Latin commendare, to recommend. From the perspective of the early modern era the word stems from the Dutch word kommando, which translates as "a command or order" and also roughly to "mobile infantry regiment". This term originally referred to units of Boer mounted infantry, who fought during the Xhosa Wars and the First and Second Boer Wars. The word Kommando, in turn, would have originated from the Portuguese term "Comando", used in India in the sense of a group of troops under an autonomous command that performed special missions during a battle or siege. The word was adopted into Afrikaans from interactions with the Portuguese in their nearby African colonies, in whose language the word comando means "command". In South Africa similar troops operated in small detachments, usually traveling on horseback, and launched rapid attacks against British troops. During the Second World War, both the British and the Germans decided to reuse this term to designate the new special operations troops they had formed (the British designated Commandos and the German Kommandos). Later the term was used by other countries to designate some of their elite forces. Less likely, it is a High German loan word, which was borrowed from Italian in the 17th century, from the sizable minority of German settlers in the initial European colonization of South Africa.