Animals, plants & weather

chaparral

Basque txapar 'thicket, dwarf oak' gave Spanish chaparro 'evergreen oak', and a chaparral was a place full of them. Spanish speakers used it for the scrubland of California and the Southwest, and American English took it from them — along with chaps, the cowboy's leggings for riding through it.

Weakest linkProbable

The road to American English

From Spanish to Mexican Spanish

From Spanish to Mexican Spanish, American English

1550Basque

Hops are evenly spaced; labels show the year each form is first attested.

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