Spanish Word of the Day - gringo

Spanish gringo = gringo
from Sp. griego (Greek)
It's all Greek to me.

Rome was a great military power. Greece was a great cultural and intellectual center. Each had a need for the other. Each felt contempt for the other. They were a perfect match.


Upper class Roman youths could not aspire to high rank without a classical Greek education. That included fluency in the Greek language. The teachers were Greeks, and excellent teachers they were. They also were excellent eaters and drinkers (click here for the origin of parasite). As Rome's fortunes waned in the west, so did Greece's. But the eastern Roman Empire survived very well in what had become the Byzantine Empire. Greek culture completely dominated there. As learning and culture slowly crept back into Western Europe, so did Greek cultural influence. The educated few still needed a command of the Greek language.

Time went by and relations between the Roman Church and the Byzantine Church, never very good, worsened. Respect for Greek language and culture weakened. The Great Schism formalized the break and derogatory phrases such as "It's all Greek to me" entered into use. The Greek language had passed from an object of veneration to an object of scorn. Spanish griego (a Greek), corrupted to gringo, was applied first to a foreign (incomprehensible) language, then to a speaker of such language. The first recorded use of the word referred to a group of Irishmen living on the coast of Spain. The Spaniards were fond of the Irish because they were the enemy of their enemy, England. Many years later, the Germans became fond of the Irish for the same reason.

As a point of interest, the Greeks sharply divided all people into two classes: Greeks and barbarians. The barbarians were barbaroi (speakers of an incomprehensible language, where barbar- was echoic of the babbling noises of the barbarians).

Almost any non-Spanish-speaking person could be a gringo, except for Italian immigrants to Argentina. They became wops (from Sp guapo = handsome).

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