First recorded in 1940–45; from Spanish (Mexico, southwestern U.S.) : probably originally a resident of El Paso, Texas, equivalent to (El) Pas(o) + -uco pejorative noun suffix, with expressive replacement of s by ch; compare Mexican Spanish pachuco “worthless card hand,” derivative of paso “pass”
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You can track the evolution of these shapes back to the 1940s and ’50s pachuco down to the cholos of the present day.
From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 12, 2023
The public forgot this history, the professor argued, because the Chicano movement rehabilitated the pachuco “as an icon and figure of resistance against white supremacy” and thus ignored other victims.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 2, 2023
The Mexican immigrant was familiar with zoot suits through the films of the Mexican comedian Tin-Tan, who satirized pachuco culture in a series of films in the 1940s and 1950s.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 2, 2023
Like many other teen-age Mexican Americans, Chavez became a pachuco, affecting a zoot suit with pegged pants, a broad flat hat and a ducktail haircut.
From Time Magazine Archive
Some sociologists now see the pachuco movement as the first example of militant separatism among Chicanos, an assertion of a distinct identity hostile to Anglo culture.
From Time Magazine Archive
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
