English words from Spanish
Spanish reached English through the Americas as much as through Spain: ranch words, place names across the American West, and a few that Spanish itself had borrowed from Arabic or Indigenous languages.
- Alcatraz
Spanish naval officer Juan Manuel de Ayala charted San Francisco Bay in 1775 and named one island "La Isla de los Alcatraces" — "Island of the Pelicans" — after the birds he found roosting on its cliffs. Alcatraz is the shortened form that stuck, though the…
From the Fri, Aug 7, 2026 roundup → - Anaheim
Anaheim was founded in 1857 by a colony of German wine-growers who bought land along the Santa Ana River. Rather than name the settlement purely in Spanish or purely in German, they split the difference: "Ana," for the river, plus the German "heim," meaning…
From the Wed, Aug 5, 2026 roundup → - Armada
"Armada" is simply the Spanish for "armed," the feminine past participle of "armar," and in Spanish it still means any navy. English borrowed it in the 1530s as a general word for a fleet, and then 1588 happened. The 130 ships Philip II sent against England…
From the Mon, Sep 28, 2026 roundup → - Avocado
The avocado's name traces to a Nahuatl word for the fruit that, thanks to its shape (and the way they tend to hang in pairs), also doubled as slang for a part of male anatomy in the language of the Aztecs. That's a real linguistic footnote — but it's often…
From the Sat, Aug 15, 2026 roundup → - Canoe
When Columbus reached the Caribbean in 1492, he needed a word for the Taíno people's dugout boats, unlike anything used in Europe. He recorded the Arawakan canaoua, which became Spanish canoa and then English "canoe." It's one of the very first words from the…
From the Sun, Sep 6, 2026 roundup → - Caribbean
When Spanish, French, and English sailors began charting the islands in the 16th century, they took the name directly from the Carib people who lived across much of the eastern islands, seafaring communities whose own name the Spanish rendered as "Caribe."…
From the Fri, Sep 18, 2026 roundup → - Casablanca
Casablanca's name has been through three languages before landing in English. Portuguese traders built a new town on the site of a Berber settlement called Anfa in 1515 and named it "Casa Branca" — "white house." When the Spanish took over regional trade…
From the Wed, Aug 5, 2026 roundup → - Ecuador
Most countries are named for a person, a tribe, or a landscape feature. Ecuador is simply named for a line: it's the Spanish word for the equator, the invisible line circling the globe at zero degrees latitude that happens to run directly through the country…
From the Sun, Sep 13, 2026 roundup → - El Dorado
Long before it meant a golden city, El Dorado — Spanish for "the gilded one" — referred to a person: a king of the Muisca people in the Colombian Andes, who was ritually coated in gold dust before boarding a raft on Lake Guatavita to make offerings to the…
From the Mon, Aug 10, 2026 roundup → - El Niño
Peruvian fishermen along the country's northern coast noticed, well before scientists took interest, that a warm ocean current periodically pushed in around late December, scattering the cold-water fish stocks their livelihoods depended on. They named the…
From the Sat, Sep 19, 2026 roundup → - El Salvador
The only country in the world named directly after Jesus Christ. In 1525, conquistador Pedro de Alvarado's forces founded a settlement they called San Salvador — "Holy Savior" — later formalized as Provincia De Nuestro Señor Jesucristo, El Salvador Del Mundo…
From the Mon, Aug 3, 2026 roundup → - Embargo
An "embargo" — an official order restricting trade or shipping — comes from the Spanish verb embargar, "to restrain" or "to seize," itself rooted in a Latin word for a bar or barrier (the same root behind "barricade"). English adopted it in the early 1600s…
From the Thu, Aug 20, 2026 roundup → - Espadrille
The rope-soled shoe takes its name from the Catalan word espardenya, itself rooted in espart, the tough esparto grass its sole was traditionally woven from. "Espadrilles" have been worn in the Pyrenees for centuries, long before they became a summer wardrobe…
From the Fri, Sep 4, 2026 roundup → - Filibuster
A filibuster — using prolonged debate to block or delay a vote, a maneuver forever associated with the U.S. Senate — didn't start out as a legislative term at all. It traces through Spanish filibustero and French flibustier back to the Dutch word vrijbuiter…
From the Thu, Aug 20, 2026 roundup → - Grenade
Spanish "granada" is a pomegranate, from Latin "granatum," full of seeds. The early explosive of the 1500s was a hollow iron ball about the size of the fruit, packed with powder and fragments, and the resemblance was obvious enough that the "grenade" took the…
From the Tue, Sep 29, 2026 roundup → - Guerrilla
"Guerrilla" is a Spanish diminutive of guerra, "war," literally meaning "little war." It entered English during the Peninsular War of 1808 to 1814, describing the irregular resistance that Spanish civilians waged against Napoleon's occupying army, tying down…
From the Sat, Sep 5, 2026 roundup → - Iguana
English borrowed "iguana" from Spanish, which had in turn borrowed it from a Taíno or other Arawakan word used by Caribbean islanders long before Columbus ever arrived — one of a handful of everyday English words (see also: hurricane, canoe, barbecue) that…
From the Thu, Aug 27, 2026 roundup → - Los Angeles
Los Angeles started life in 1781 with a Spanish name several times longer than the one it goes by now, honoring "Our Lady, Queen of the Angels" along with a nearby river. Over the following century, most of that devotional mouthful got dropped, leaving only…
From the Sat, Sep 12, 2026 roundup → - Nacho
Nachos were invented in 1943 by Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya, a maître d' at the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico. The story goes that a group of U.S. military wives crossed the border after the kitchen had closed, and Anaya improvised with what was…
From the Sun, Aug 2, 2026 roundup → - Puerto Rico
Christopher Columbus named the entire island San Juan Bautista in 1493, honoring St. John the Baptist. The Spanish settlement built decades later at its main harbor was called, straightforwardly, Puerto Rico — Spanish for "rich port." Over the next century…
From the Thu, Aug 27, 2026 roundup → - Quixotic
To call a scheme "quixotic" is to name-drop Miguel de Cervantes's 1605 novel Don Quixote without realizing it. The title character, an aging Spanish gentleman who reads too many chivalric romances and sets off to revive knight-errantry, famously charges a row…
From the Sat, Aug 22, 2026 roundup → - Renegade
Spanish "renegado" meant one who has denied again, from "renegar," and it was used specifically for a Christian who had converted to Islam, a common enough figure in the Mediterranean of the 1500s that the word was needed. English took it as "renegade" in the…
From the Mon, Sep 28, 2026 roundup → - Rodeo
Spanish "rodeo" is a rounding up, from "rodear," to go around, and on the ranches of Mexico and California it meant the seasonal gathering of cattle for branding and counting. The contest grew out of the work: cowboys competed at the skills the roundup…
From the Wed, Sep 30, 2026 roundup → - Tango
Nobody agrees on where the word came from before it became a dance: some trace it to a Spanish term imitating a drumbeat, others to Kikongo or other West African languages carried across the Atlantic by the diaspora communities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo…
From the Sat, Sep 19, 2026 roundup → - Tornado
Spanish "tronada" means a thunderstorm, from "tronar," to thunder. English sailors picked it up in the 1550s for the violent squalls of the tropical Atlantic, and over the next decades the spelling wandered through "ternado" and "turnado" before settling as…
From the Mon, Sep 28, 2026 roundup → - Trampoline
American gymnast George Nissen built his first bouncing apparatus out of canvas and inner-tube rubber in 1934, inspired by watching circus acrobats rebound off safety nets. He patented it as a "Tumbling Device," but the catchier name came later, borrowed from…
From the Fri, Aug 14, 2026 roundup → - Trinidad
Christopher Columbus reportedly vowed, before setting out on his third voyage in 1498, that he'd name the first land he sighted after the Holy Trinity. When his ships approached the island, the first thing his crew spotted was a cluster of three hills — still…
From the Mon, Aug 3, 2026 roundup →