pachuco

/pəˈt͡ʃuːkəʊ/

Etymology

From Mexican Spanish pachuco (“flashily dressed”).

Why this word is great

PACHUCO — [Noun] A Mexican American, especially a juvenile delinquent in the Los Angeles area, or the argot spoken by that group. From Mexican Spanish pachuco ("flashily dressed"), possibly originally referring to a resident of El Paso, Texas. Unlike "cholo" (which has broader, later connotations) or "zoot suiter" (a term unmoored from Mexican American identity), "pachuco" evokes a specific moment in history—the 1940s, when young men in draped suits and wide-brimmed hats carved out a defiant, bilingual identity in the barrios of L.A. It is the swagger of a chain wallet swinging against a pressed pant leg, the sharp crease of a fedora catching the neon glow of a downtown street, the rhythmic slang of Caló slipping between English and Spanish like a blade—a subculture born of exclusion, turning marginalization into style.

noun

A Mexican American, especially a juvenile delinquent in the Los Angeles area.“Now they saw that Terry was Mexican, a Pachuco wildcat; and that her boy was worse than that.”
An argot spoken by that group, sometimes known as caló.“Like the zoot suit, the Pachuco caló was adopted by a large part of the Chicano youth who did not, in essence, identify themselves as Pachucos.”