What does "latino" mean?

Alternative letter-case form of Latino.

What is a synonym for "latino"?

Common synonyms include: hispanic, hispanic, latin, latin, latin american, spic.

Latino

//ləˈtiːnəʊ// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
Alternative letter-case form of Latino. alt-of
2
A person, especially and usually (interpreted as) a male, from Latin America, a Hispanic person. (Compare Latina.) US
"Latinos have quickly become the largest ethnic minority in the United States."
3
a native of Latin America wordnet

Adjective

1
Of Latin American descent, Hispanic. US, not-comparable
"She called Ottinger a "tool" of the business community and Lopez a "box checker,” apparently meaning that he was only nominally Latino and that he had acted in a way that was detrimental to the interests of Latinos."

Adjective

1
related to a Spanish-speaking people or culture wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

hispanic hispanic latin latin latin american spic

Example

More examples

"Today, things are better for the Latino community in the USA."

Etymology

American English, first attested in the 1960s for a person of Spanish-speaking or Latin American ancestry (notably Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban), originally an (informal) shortened form of Spanish latinoamericano (“Latin American”, adjective). Its appearance probably coincided with the colloquial use of Anglo (for a person of British or White US descent) and Afro (for a person of Black or African US descent).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.