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
Michelle Argote, the stylist offering her low-cost services on pachuco night, worked at various stores in the outdoor mall as a teen, and has frequented the record store since it opened.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 25, 2026
Paz wasn’t the first to write about the pachuco.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 11, 2023
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
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
Mr. Olmos, your breakthrough came from playing El Pachuco in “Zoot Suit,” first in the play and then the film.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 21, 2026
He’s demonstrating the El Pachuco stance, the provocative hep-cat pose immortalized by Edward James Olmos when he created the hypnotic and seductive main character who struts and glides across Valdez’s era-defining 1978 play “Zoot Suit.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 2, 2023
Valdez conceived El Pachuco as the embodiment of the outrageously stylish young batos he used to spot around town, who spoke a Cantinflas-meets-Raymond-Chandler patois called caló and jitterbugged at clubs from Boyle Heights to Bakersfield.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 2, 2023
And El Pachuco, in his high-waisted “drapes” and angled hat, who narrates “Zoot Suit” while occasionally stepping outside the Brechtian Fourth Wall to freeze-fame the action or utter caustic commentary, is its righteously insolent heart.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 2, 2023
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
In a June 19, 1970 columna, he antagonized the left by describing the pachucos of a previous generation as “anarchistic.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 29, 2025
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.
