Pachuco

//pəˈt͡ʃuːkəʊ// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A Mexican American, especially a juvenile delinquent in the Los Angeles area. US, countable

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

  2. 2
    a Mexican-American teenager who belongs to a neighborhood gang and who dresses in showy clothes wordnet
  3. 3
    An argot spoken by that group, sometimes known as caló. uncountable

    "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."

Example

More examples

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

Etymology

From Mexican Spanish pachuco (“flashily dressed”).

Related phrases

juvenile delinquentlos angelesmexican american

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