[American Spanish chicano,
dialectal variant of mexicano, Mexican, from
México, Mexico.]
Chi·ca no
adj.
Usage Note: Chicano is used only of
Mexican Americans, not of Mexicans living in Mexico. It was originally
an informal term in English (as in Spanish), and the spelling
of the first recorded instance in an American publication followed
the Spanish custom of lowercasing nouns of national or ethnic
origin. However, the literary and political movements of the
1960s and 1970s among Mexican Americans established Chicano
as a term of ethnic pride, and it is properly written today with
a capital. ·While Chicano is a term of pride for
many Mexican Americans, it remains a word with strong political
associations. Since these politics are not necessarily espoused
by all Mexican Americans, and since usage and acceptance of this
word can vary from one region to another, an outsider who is
unfamiliar with his or her audience may do well to use Mexican
American instead. See Usage Note at Hispanic.
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