Rebellion | Vocabulary | Khan Academy

Sound the drums of war, wordsmiths, because today I teach you about rebellion. Man, I'm a great influence!

It's a noun; it means war or pushback against a government or an authority, right? The American Revolutionary War began as a rebellion against the British crown. Now, this word has Latin origins. The root "bell" comes from the Latin "bellum," meaning war, and the prefix "re" means again, against, or back. So, rebels stand up and maybe go to war against something, right? They’re seeking change.

So, two countries going to war with each other is not a rebellion, but an uprising within a country protesting a tyrannical ruler—that's a rebellion. So "re" and "bell," those are our word parts I want to focus on today. I'm going to put on some music for about 10 seconds, and while I do that, come up with as many words as you can that contain those elements. Okay, let's go.

[Music]

Okay, here are three that I came up with:

• Remake: Like there's an old movie, and you're making a new version of it, right? You're making it again.
• Belligerent: One of my favorite adjectives. It means hostile or warlike. A belligerent person starts a lot of arguments, a lot of fights.
• And this last one: Rebel. Right, also contained within "rebellion," this word can be a noun or a verb.

I wanted to flag it because pronunciations are different depending on how you use it. When it's a person, they're a rebel, but the thing that a rebel does is rebel, fight back, right? The emphasis changes from the first syllable to the second, right? First syllable, second syllable. The nouns verbed: the rebels rebelled in their rebellion.

Let's use rebellion in a sentence or two: To the mind of a dictator, something as innocent as a sidewalk chalk drawing could be seen as an act of rebellion. So it's seen as an act of war, right? And/or of open resistance to the dictator.

Look at a mouth open! He looks so scandalized! By Little House, Marta rebelled quietly. She pulled doors marked "push." She rode her bike through the drive-through. She microwaved fish in the office.

I feel like contributing to kind of an anti-fish narrative here, and that's unfair. I microwave fish in the Khan Academy lunchroom! Whatever, I'm not too proud to admit it. Does that make me a hero? Maybe. Does it make me a rebel? Oh, you betcha!

Now, if you'll excuse me, your boy's got a serving of tuna casserole in the refrigerator, and I can't eat it cold, if you know what I mean. So you can learn anything, damn it!