I hereby apologize to all marsupials for mis-speciezizing them

Wow that's a whole load of US-centric malarkey. If you read between the bouts of patriotic (hah!).drivel, you'll see that it hasn't got anything to do with the US revolution. One of the faction was called the patriots which warped the meaning of the word in the English language for a time, reverting after the revolution back to the original meaning.

The word itself is derived from Greek and Latin (which took it from Greek, but that's neither here nor there) and appears in French, German, Spanish and probably many, many others before and after the little revolution some blokes embarrassed the king of England with in the 18th century.

No matter what they tell you in US schools, but the American revolution wasn't this big eruption, sending ripples through Europe. The monarchs of Europe were occupied with the French and their shenanigans at the time. People didn't care about some tea in Boston being spilled (besides the British that is). Yet, they still used the word Patriot with moremor less.the same meaning. So no, the word was not influenced by the USA in the grand scheme of things.

Merriam-Webster is once again deep in the propaganda game, that's all.