Encyclopedia > Gringo

  Article Content

Gringo

Gringo (female, gringa) is a derogatory term in the Spanish language for someone from the United States of America. The proper term is estadounidense or norteamericano.

Etymologically, gringo comes from griego ("Greek"), since Greek was the proverbial example of not understandable language (as in Shakespeare's "That's Greek to me[?]"). It was then applied to speakers of foreign languages, especially English language. Later it was extended to white-skinned people even if Spanish-speaking, and can sometimes even mean just blonde[?].

Most English language speakers have met the word in Western films.

Compare with Yankee and Usian.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Bugatti

... the world's fastest, the Bugatti EB110 (so named to honour the 110th anniversary of Ettore Bugatti's birth). Bugatti EB 110 The completed car was ready in 1990 but the ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 26.9 ms