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The Debunker: Does the Word "Gringo" Come from Songs of the Mexican-American War?

by Ken Jennings

In January, we stand at the frontier of a new year. Obviously, there's no better month to remember that other mythic uncharted territory, the American frontier of the Old West! In the Western classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a newspaper editor famously says, "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." But that attitude has led to a lot of frontier lore that's just plain loco. We've asked Jeopardy gunfighter Ken Jennings to separate fact from legend--and print only the facts. Let's see if he can clean up this town.

The Debunker: Does the Word "Gringo" Come from Songs of the Mexican-American War?

Etymology rule of thumb: as well-known stories about word origins become more and more "fun" and improbable, the likelihood that they are true approaches zero. Take the word gringo, a scornful Spanish slang word for anglo types. According to an oft-told story, gringo dates back to the Mexican-American War, when American soldiers were frequently overheard singing marching songs like "Green Grow the Rushes" and "Green Grow the Lilacs." Gringo is actually a corruption of the words "green grow," this theory would have you believe.

Circus Devils

This musical theory sounds sort of unlikely on the face of it. Think about it: how often would you have to sing "Shake It Off" in your driveway before your neighbors starting calling you and your entire race "shake-its"? But there's an even bigger problem here: the Mexican War began in 1846. Gringo appears in a Spanish dictionary published in Barcelona in 1787. There it refers to "foreigners who have a certain type of accent...in particular, to the Irish." The Irish: the original gringos!

The evidence is pretty clear that gringo actually derives from griego, Spanish for "Greek." Just as in the English expression "it's all Greek to me," Spanish uses "Greek" as an idiomatic stand-in for any unfamiliar foreign language. (Greeks, interestingly, say "it's all Chinese to me.") An 1817 dictionary lists a few synonyms for "gibberish," including "en griego" and "en gringo." The U.S. infantry could have sung whatever stupid song it wanted and they still would have been gringos. (Especially if they were putting mango salsa on their tacos. ¡Que barbaridad!)

Quick Quiz: Old Gringo, the first Mexican novel to become a U.S. bestseller, is a fictionalized account of the last days of what author of The Devil's Dictionary, who disappeared in Mexico in 1914?

Ken Jennings is the author of six books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.