the.com/junta

means A small group — usually military officers — who rule a country after taking control by force rather than election.

from Straight from Spanish and Portuguese 'junta,' meaning a council, board, or committee — itself from Latin 'iunctus,' 'joined,' the same root that gives us 'join' and 'junction.' Originally it just meant a meeting or assembly of people joined together to govern or deliberate, with no coup implied. The word picked up its armed-takeover sense in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially through Latin American and Spanish political history, where juntas repeatedly formed by seizing the state rather than being voted into it — and the name stuck to the act, not just the meeting.