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”
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Emiliano Zapata’s face floats next to an Aztec pyramid, and a pachuco hangs out with a female Brown Beret.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 19, 2026
What’s emphasized instead is pachuco cool, Chicano style, Mexican resilience.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 2, 2023
Paz wasn’t the first to write about the pachuco.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 11, 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
Early in May, I headed to El Pachuco in Fullerton, a boutique and custom tailor shop where the zoot set have been getting their duds since 1978.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 13, 2023
If there’s a touch of Cesar Chavez in El Pachuco, the character’s mythic presence, his stylized menace and insinuating mannerisms tap into an even deeper mythos, dating back centuries.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 2, 2023
This is a private press label that Pachuco Volume 1 is on: Billionaire Records.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 17, 2022
For one of its regular sections, “Lowriders of the Past,” readers would send in photos of family members posing with their customized vintage cars from back in the 1940s Pachuco era.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 13, 2019
Valdez fictionalized the events, added music and dance, and infused the piece with allegory, including the symbolic character of El Pachuco, representing the Latino ethos.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 2, 2017
To be clear: Not all pachucos were gang members, nor did all gang members dress like pachucos.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 13, 2023
Hundreds of pachucos came from the Eastside to help their Black peers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 2, 2023
But the musical by Luis Valdez was a distinctly Los Angeles production: it was commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum and portrayed a 1940s murder trial involving Mexican-American zoot-suit-wearing youths known as pachucos.
From New York Times ● Mar. 30, 2017
To the pachucos, the baggy, finely tailored zoot suit was a symbol of pride, a way to assert their identity.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 13, 2016
That diversity is certainly on display and the show documents the influence of British youth culture on Latinos, juxtaposing photographs of British Teddy Boys with zoot-suited Mexican American youth, known as pachucos.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 13, 2016
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.
