Mexican X-plainer: Peines & Pendejos

My wife has 3 pet names for me: “Güero, “Amor,” and “PENDEJO.”

I’d say the last one is her favorite, given how often she uses it, heh.

If you don’t speak Mexican Spanish, you may not get the joke. “Pendejo” has quite a few meanings, but the most common in Mexico is “dumb-ass,” only slightly stronger and with interesting nuances.

Want to know its origin? Okay!

It comes from the Latin “pectiniculus” (diminutive of “pecten”).

“Wait, what? How? And what did the Latin word mean?”

Patience, friends. Let’s take it step by step. This article? It’s going to be long. Grab a cup of coffee.

Here we go!

Remember, Vulgar Latin gave rise to the Romance languages. As the variety spoken in one spot of the Iberian Peninsula began to evolve into Castilian, words with an internal –ct– (/kt/) combination went through an interesting evolution. The /k/ sound first became a “yod,” a sound often represented by the letters “y” or “i,” but written /j/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). As a result, the following “t” was palatalized (drawn up toward the palate of the mouth), become /tʃ/ (“ch”).

/kt/ -> /jt/ -> /tʃ/

Here’s the progression of three example words, going from Classical Latin to early and then late Vulgar Latin and finally Spanish.