Californio

American  

[ka-li-fawrn-yoh] / ˌkæ lɪˈfɔrn joʊ /

noun

• Californios
  plural

1. History/Historical. one of the Spanish-speaking colonists who settled California before it was annexed by the United States of America, or a descendant of one of these colonists.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• non-Californio
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• Californios
  plural

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Californio Californios

Andres Pico was a Californio statesmen and acting governor of Alta California, and Lt.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 17, 2024

Some cash-strapped Californio dons took out mortgages with vicious terms — as high as 6% monthly interest.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 4, 2021

The clapboard walls of a Monterey house scream “Cape Cod,” yet the long, airy verandas are so, so Californio.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 13, 2021

The Greek Revivals and Georgian Colonials of Lexington and Concord were re-created on the streets of L.A., where they stood defiantly apart, wood amidst adobe, Anglo among Californio.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 13, 2021

We have nothing or almost nothing in reptile from the Californio, Yutacan and Guatemala; boas, the crested basilic and the horrible heloderme, a great lizard with tuberculiform scales, should be sent us.

From Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 With Instructions for Collecting, Preparing, and Forwarding Objects of Natural History Written by The Professors Administrators of The Museum Of Natural History At Paris. And Instructions Relative to Anthropology and Zoology by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Isidore

At UCLA, when she finally learned about the Californios, she was “outraged” and questioned why her beloved high school history teacher “didn’t teach us this basic thing.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2025

Before the Civil War, some Californios and residents from the American South agitated again and again to divide the state in half — Union sympathizers in the north, Southerners and slavery supporters in the south.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 12, 2024

The historian Leonard Pitt wrote that conditions in L.A. in that decade amounted to nothing less than a “race war” against both Californios and native Americans.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 17, 2023

It survived the drought of 1864, which destroyed the cattle industry in Southern California, reduced the Californios to ruins and ushered in the beginnings of the modern city.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 13, 2022

Although some Californios staged a short-lived rebellion in September 1846, many others submitted to the U.S. takeover.

From Textbooks ● Dec. 30, 2014