Gringo Archives – A Way with Words

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Currently viewing the tag: "Gringo"

Criss-Cross Applesauce (episode #1443)

Posted by Grant Barrett on August 11, 2018 · Add Comment

How do languages change and grow? Does every language acquire new words in the same way? Martha and Grant focus on how that process happens in English and Spanish. Plus, the stories behind the Spanish word gringo and the old instruction to elementary school students to sit “Indian style.” The English equivalents of German sayings [...]

Origin of Gringo

Posted by Grant Barrett on April 2, 2016 · Add Comment

A sixth-grade teacher in San Antonio, Texas, is skeptical about a story that gringo derives from a song lyric. He’s right. The most likely source of this word is the Spanish word for “Greek,” griego, a term applied to foreigners much the same way that English speakers might say that an unintelligible language is Greek [...]

Etymology of Gringo

Posted by Grant Barrett on October 24, 2009 · Add Comment

Theories about how Latin Americans came to use the term gringo as a disparaging word for foreigners. We can easily rule out the one about the song “Green Grow the Lilacs,” but what about the rest? This is part of a complete episode.

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Criss-Cross Applesauce (episode #1443)

Origin of Gringo

Etymology of Gringo