| William Lee Irwin III 2004-09-07, 3:36 am |
| On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 08:41:42PM -0600, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
On Mon, Sep 06, 2004 at 09:49:21AM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:[vbcol=seagreen]
> The story that I've heard is that the term was coined during the
> U.S. / Mexican war (where the U.S. essentially stole a large part of
> Texas from Mexico at gun-point --- personally, as far as I'm
> concerned, you can have Texas back as long as you take George Bush
> with it :-), the American soldiers were often heard to sing the song,
> "Green Grow the Rushes Oh" as they marched through Mexican territory,
> and that's where the term "Gringo" came from.
> I doubt anyone can prove with 100% certainty where the word came from.
I heard it dated from Pershing's incursions, which is at variance with
all possible explanations listed for it on wikipedia.org (it cites
"griego" as the original etymology, and includes some commentary on the
Mexican-American War -era folk etymology, including "Green Grow the
Lilacs" as another song that may have inspired it), so that's likely false.
-- wli
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