Vato

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A Hispanic youth; a guy; a dude.

    "Say sergeant, my primo from Osten is over there. A real crazy vato, man."

Example

More examples

"Say sergeant, my primo from Osten is over there. A real crazy vato, man."

Etymology

From Spanish vato, ultimately from chivato. Term is mostly used by people from northwest Mexico (Sinaloa, Sonora, Chihuahua, Baja California).

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