mestizo

American  

[me-stee-zoh, mi-] / mɛˈsti zoʊ, mɪ- /

noun

plural

mestizos, mestizoes

1. a person of mixed racial or ethnic ancestry, especially, in Latin America, of mixed Indigenous and European descent or, in the Philippines, of mixed Indigenous and foreign descent.

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mestizo British  

/ mɛˈstiːzə, mɛˈstiːzəʊ, mɪ- /

noun

1. a person of mixed parentage, esp the offspring of a Spanish American and an American Indian

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Other Word Forms

• mestiza
  noun

Etymology

Origin of mestizo

First recorded in 1580–90; from Spanish, noun use of adjective mestizo, from Vulgar Latin mixtīcius (unrecorded) “mixed”

Compare meaning

How does mestizo compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• mestizo vs. mulatto

Explanation

In Latin America, someone with both indigenous and European ancestry is described as mestizo. In Mexico, the majority of people are mestizos. Mestizo, a Spanish word that's rooted in the Latin mixtus, or "mixed," originally meant "person of mixed Spanish and Amerindian parentage." Though some groups of Latin Americans still employ this word to describe their own combined heritage, it's becoming less common for people with mixed ancestry to use the term. Approximately one third of people identifying as Hispanic in the U.S. also describe themselves as mestizo.

Example Sentences

Márquez’s talk about race is disruptive in a country that for generations identified its people as sharing a single mixed race, called Mestizo.

From Washington Post • May 21, 2022

Mestizo owner Jim Urdiales is also adjusting to a higher percentage of to-go orders, largely through Waitr.

From Washington Times • May 12, 2018

“The White Boy Shuffle” was published at the high point of nineteen-nineties multiculturalism—Gunnar, the ultimate “cultural mulatto,” attends a P.C.-obsessed school called Mestizo Mulatto Mongrel Elementary—and the novel was knowingly inauthentic.

From The New Yorker • Mar. 31, 2015

High up in the thin, cold air of the Bolivian Andes, shrewd Mestizo Sim�n I. Pati�o built for himself and his family an empire of tin.

From Time Magazine Archive

We found there neither village nor farm, but merely two or three huts, inhabited by Mestizo fishermen.

From Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 1 by Ross, Thomasina