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Excerpt
Bush uses disparaging term to describe self
Santiago, Chile (AP) -- Nov 21, 2004 - President Bush, trying to mend relations with Latin America, pledged Sunday to make a fresh push for stalled immigration reforms and defended the U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying that "history will prove it right."
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Bush, arriving at La Moneda palace earlier in the day, greeted Lagos with self-deprecating humor: "Ricardo, aqui esta el gringo." Translation: "Ricardo, the gringo's here."
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grin·go ( P ) Pronunciation Key (grngg)
n. Offensive Slang pl. grin·gosUsed as a disparaging term for a foreigner in Latin America, especially an American or English person.
[Spanish, foreign, foreign language, gibberish, probably alteration of griego, Greek, from Latin Graecus. See Greek.]
__________________________Word History: In Latin America the word gringo is an offensive term for a foreigner, particularly an American or English person. But the word existed in Spanish before this particular sense came into being. In fact, gringo may be an alteration of the word griego, the Spanish development of Latin Graecus, "Greek." Griego first meant "Greek, Grecian," as an adjective and "Greek, Greek language," as a noun. The saying "It's Greek to me" exists in Spanish, as it does in English, and helps us understand why griego came to mean "unintelligible language" and perhaps, by further extension of this idea, "stranger, that is, one who speaks a foreign language." The altered form gringo lost touch with Greek but has the senses "unintelligible language," "foreigner, especially an English person," and in Latin America, "North American or Britisher." Its first recorded English use (1849) is in John Woodhouse Audubon's Western Journal: "We were hooted and shouted at as we passed through, and called 'Gringoes.'"
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
__________________________gringo
\Grin"go\, n. [Amer. Sp., fr. Sp. gringo gibberish; cf. griego Greek, F. grigou wretch.] Among Spanish Americans, a foreigner, esp. an Englishman or American; -- often used as a term of reproach.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
__________________________gringo
n : a Latin American (disparaging) term for foreigners (especially Americans and Englishmen)
Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University
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