Gabacho

The abridged edition of Joan Coromines' "Etymological Dictionary of Castilian" defines gabacho in the following way: "Pejorative name applied to the French since 1530. From the Occitan gavach, 'rude mountain dweller', 'native of a northern region who speaks the national language badly'. The word's strictest meaning is 'bird's crop' (13th century) or 'goiter', applied to the mountain dwellers in the northern Occitan-speaking zones due to the frequency of the disease in this population. A word of poorly documented pre-Roman origin." In the "Etymological Dictionary of Catalan", Coromines mentions a series of Catalan terms that contain the root gav-, and deduces that this root may have a meaning similar to "crop" or "bird's beak". In Occitan, the name was applied to the mountain dwellers of the north of the country; in Catalan, to the bordering Occitan-speakers; finally, in Castilian, it came to refer to to all the inhabitants of the French Republic. In 1992, though, a slogan was seen painted on an access road in the city of Perpignan (French Catalonia) that proclaimed in enormous letters "SEM PAS GAVATXOS" ("We are not gabachos!"). The word "gabacho" is also used nowadays in Mexico to refer to people and things related to or coming from the United States.