macho

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adjective

Of, characteristic of, or befitting the male sex: male, manful, manlike, manly, mannish, masculine, virile. See gender.

adj

Definition: aggressively male
Antonyms: wimpish

n

Definition: red-blooded male
Antonyms: wimp

Origin: 1927

Meanwhile, south of the border, there was that other North American country from which we had freely taken words throughout the nineteenth century--words like Ranch (1831), Rodeo (1844), Cafeteria (1853), Vigilante (1860), buckaroo (1827), bonanza (1844), placer (1848), hoosegow (1909), and ten-gallon hat (1927, from galón, "braids"). Oh, and gringo (1849), referring to citizens of the United States. Not content with all these borrowings, we took much of the northern part of their country of origin as well during the mid-nineteenth century.

Our fascination with Mexico endured in the twentieth century. A particular fascination for the gringo male was the notion of extreme masculinity embodied in macho. Spanish macho seemed to offer opportunities for manliness and toughness unavailable in English. Macho was apparently known in the West by 1927; it made its way back to the New York weekly The Nation early in 1928, when a correspondent wrote, "Here I was in their midst, a Macho Yankee Gringo, yet treated with consideration." More recently, author Norman Mailer was one who took machismo seriously. In his 1961 Advertisements for Myself he wrote, "Every American writer who takes himself to be both major and macho must sooner or later give a faena [a ritual performance like a bullfighter's] which borrows from the self-love of a Hemingway style."

In our era of increasing egalitarianism, macho movie heroes remain the rage, literally and figuratively. And in 1992, astronomers gave the ultimate tribute to a newly discovered (or at least imagined) celestial body, like a planet but larger, by naming it Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Object, MACHO for short.

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Biography

Horse actor first onscreen in 2000 film, Running Free. ~ Rovi

Running Free Buy this Movie

For a list of words related to macho, see:

• Dominant, Stubborn, Proud, or Confident
• Sexuality and Libido - macho: (adj) overly assertive, virile, and domineering

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  See crossword solutions for the clue Macho.

Dansk (Danish)
n. - MACHO, he-man

Français (French)
n. - (abrév = Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Object), (Astron) halo galactique

Deutsch (German)
n. - (Astr.) MACHO, massives astrophysikalisches Kompakthaloobjekt

Español (Spanish)
n. - sigla de: objeto aureolar compacto astrofísico masivo

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
强壮男子, 大男子气概, 大男子气的人

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 強壯男子, 大男子氣概, 大男子氣的人

한국어 (Korean)
n. - (우주학) 블랙 홀과 같은 응축체

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