Woman in an outdoor cafe reading the English-language Gringo Gazette in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, 2007
17 November 2020
Gringo is a borrowing from Spanish and is alteration of Griego, or Greek. In Spanish, the phrase hablar en griego, to talk in Greek, means to speak unintelligibly. This is akin to the English phrase, it’s all Greek to me. Both the Spanish and English idioms apparently come from the sixteenth-century Latin phrase, graecum est; non potest legi (it is Greek; it cannot be read). Evidently it was the practice of scholars at the time, who often did not read Greek, when copying texts to omit Greek words that appeared in them, using this notation to mark the omission. An example from 1579 that criticizes a scholar for omitting a Greek word found in Jerome’s works and not marking it with the phrase:
We haue often seene before, what an impudent falsarie M. Hesk. is of the Doctors, and here, I know not for what cause, except it were to trouble the sense of Hieronymes words, both in ye Latine & in his English translation, he hath left out the Greeke word yt Hieronyme vseth in this sentence, A tempore igitur ἐνδελεχισμοῦ, quod nos interpretati sumus iuge sacrificium &c. Therefore from the time of the perpetuitie, which we haue interpreted the perpetuall sacrifice, &c. At least wise he should haue noted in the margent Graecum est, non potest legi.
Gringo is first recorded in Spanish. It appears in Esteban de Terreros y Pando’s 1787 Diccionario Castellano:
Gringos, Ilaman en Malaga á los estranjeros, que tienen cierta especie de acento, que los priva de una locucion facil y natural Castellana; y en Madrid dán el mismo, y por la misma causa con particularidad a los Irlandeses.
(Gringos, they call in Malaga those foreigners who have a certain type of accent which keeps them from speaking Castilian easily and naturally; and in Madrid they are given the same name, and for the same reason, particularly to the Irish.)
And somewhat later, the adjective is recorded in the 1837 edition of Neuman and Baretti’s Dictionary of the Spanish and English Languages:
Gríngo, a. (Coll.) Unintelligible, gibberish: applied to language.
The earliest English example that I have found is by Thomas Sutcliffe, an English mercenary in the employ of the Chilean government as the military governor of Juan Fernandez. He published his account of the 1835 insurrection and earthquake on that island in 1839:
I asked him why they had applied to those persons, knowing me to be their Governor, and who alone had power to pardon them. He replied that they did not even mention my name until one, called Gutierrez, said he would not surrender, for fear of being shot by the Gringo, as he had little dependance on the padre’s promise.
Also in 1839 and in regard to Chile, the Southern Literary Messenger published the following in its August issue:
Whilst looking about for the landing place, our movements were discovered by the guard on shore, and we were hailed with “quien vive,” who comes there? My colleague had previously arranged that this challenge should be answered by the officer of our boat whose Gringo accent would prove that he was not a Chilian. In the present state of hostilities, if I speak, said he, they may suspect us of being enemies, and give us a volley. A satisfactory parley ensued, in which we called ourselves Norte-Americanos, to which the guard replied, Ah, si!—Ingleses—English. By analogy, our people usually call a South American, of whatever republic, a Spaniard.
English adoption of gringo is often associated with the 1846–48 Mexican-American War. Certainly, the word became familiar to many American soldiers, and by extension the rest of the United States, as a result of the war, but it was in circulation prior to that.
There are also stories that gringo’s origin is from a song, the lyrics of which have been claimed to be by Robert Burns, with the refrain “Green grows the rashes, O,” which was sung by soldiers in the 1840s war, or alternatively by English-speaking mercenaries in Bolivar’s army earlier in that century. These stories are pure invention.
Sources:
Forbes, Peter. Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. Edinburgh: R. Menzies, 1812, 148–50. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Fulke, William. D. Heskins, D. Sanders, and M. Rastel, Accounted (Among Their Faction) Three Pillars and Archpatriarches of the Popish Synagogue. London: Henry Middleton, 1579, 120. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
H, W.B. “A Journey Across the Andes.” Southern Literary Messenger, 5.8., August 1839, 513. ProQuest.
Neuman and Baretti’s Dictionary of the Spanish and English Languages, fifth ed., vol. 1 of 2. M. Seoane, ed. London: Longman, et al.: 1837, 458. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. gringo, n.
Sutcliffe, Thomas. “Extracts Relative to the Insurrection.” The Earthquake of Juan Fernandez as it Occurred in the Year 1835. Manchester: Advertiser Office, 1839, 12. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Terreros y Pando, Esteban. Diccionario Castellano, vol. 2 of 4. Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, Hijos y Compañia, 1787. 240. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Photo credit: Strom Carlson, 5 April 2007. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.