pachuco

English

Etymology

From Mexican Spanish pachuco (“flashily dressed”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pəˈt͡ʃuːkəʊ/

Noun

pachuco (countable and uncountable, plural pachucos)

1. (US, countable) A Mexican American, especially a juvenile delinquent in the Los Angeles area.
   • 1957, Jack Kerouac, chapter 13, in On the Road, Viking Press, →OCLC, part 1:

     Now they saw that Terry was Mexican, a Pachuco wildcat; and that her boy was worse than that.

   • 1984 February 4, David Morris, “Different Origins: Joto Güero del West Side”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 28, page 15:

     I moved farther and farther into the Chicano community. I took Spanish in school and found willing tutors among my friends, who taught me a real-life version of the standard textbook language. I began to dress and comb my hair in the pachuco style of the day. I acquired the social customs and mannerisms of those around me.

   • 1998, Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain:

     They asked him if he was a pachuco. He said all the pachucos he knew of lived in El Paso. He told em he didn’t know any Mexican pachucos.

2. (uncountable) An argot spoken by that group, sometimes known as caló.
   • 1974, Linda Fine Katz, The Evolution of the Pachuco Language and Culture, Los Angeles: University of California, page 41:

     Like the zoot suit, the Pachuco caló was adopted by a large part of the Chicano youth who did not, in essence, identify themselves as Pachucos.

Derived terms

• chuke

Further reading

• pachuco on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “pachuco”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Anagrams

• capouch, coach up

Spanish

Etymology

Unknown etymology. Hypotheses include:

• From a Classical Nahuatl word.
• A shortening of pa El Chuco ("to El Paso").
• From Pachuca.
• From pocho.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /paˈt͡ʃuko/ [paˈt͡ʃu.ko]
• Rhymes: -uko
• Syllabification: pa‧chu‧co

Adjective

pachuco (feminine pachuca, masculine plural pachucos, feminine plural pachucas)

1. (Mexico) flashy, flashily dressed
2. (Costa Rica) slang (often considered low-class)

Noun

pachuco m (plural pachucos, feminine pachuca, feminine plural pachucas)

1. (Mexico) dandy
   • 2023 July 22, Rafael Estefanía, “Los pachucos, los últimos dandis de México”, in El País‎^[1]:

     Las cicatrices son testimonio de otras épocas más violentas y menos románticas, cuando los pachucos se movían en las aguas turbias de los pandilleros antes de convertirse en dandis.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. (Costa Rica) uneducated person from the city who uses city slang

Further reading

• “pachuco”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10