vato

From Spanish vato, ultimately from chivato. Term is mostly used by people from northwest Mexico (Sinaloa, Sonora, Chihuahua, Baja California).

vato (plural vatos)

1. (Chicano, slang) A Hispanic youth; a guy; a dude.
   • 1976, Christopher Press (publisher), Caracol, Volumes 3-4:

     Say sergeant, my primo from Osten is over there. A real crazy vato, man.

   • 1998 February 22, Guy Trebay, “Uprising the Indie”, in The New York Times Magazine‎^[1]:

     Its 20-page portfolio of stills from the music-video director Mark Romanek functions as a virtual swipe book of contemporary style idioms: cowboys, aliens, vatos, Janet Jackson and Madonna.

   • 1999, Mick Farren, Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife, A Novel:

     Two of the pursuers broke cover, a zoot-suited vato armed with a sacred Thompson gun and a thugee in dirty robes with a nineteenth century Martini carbine.

• IPA^(key): /ˈvato/
• Rhymes: -ato
• Hyphenation: va‧to

Borrowed from French ouate and German Watte. Compare Polish wata (“cotton wool”), Russian вата (vata, “cotton wool, glass wool, drugstore cotton”), Italian ovatta (“cotton wool, wadding”), English wad (“amorphous mass”).

vato (accusative singular vaton, plural vatoj, accusative plural vatojn)

1. cotton wool

Borrowed from English watt, named after Scottish engineer James Watt. Compare Italian, Portuguese, and French watt, German Watt, Yiddish וואַט (vat), Polish wat, Russian ватт (vatt).

vato (accusative singular vaton, plural vatoj, accusative plural vatojn)

1. watt

   Synonyms: ŭato, vatto

• jotavato
• kilovato

From Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *batu, from Proto-Austronesian *batu (compare Cebuano bato, Fijian vatu, Hawaiian haku, Hiligaynon bato, Ilocano bato, Indonesian batu, Kapampangan batu, Malay batu, Maori whatu, Sundanese batu, Tagalog bato).

vato

1. rock, stone, cobble

vato

1. nominative singular of vata (“religious duty”)

• bato, jato

According to the Mexican-American poet Luis Alberto Urrea, the word originated in Pachuco slang of the 1940s, and is derived from "the once-common friendly insult chivato or goat."^[1]

• IPA^(key): /ˈbato/ [ˈba.t̪o]
• Rhymes: -ato
• Syllabification: va‧to

vato m (plural vatos, feminine vata, feminine plural vatas)

1. (Mexico, US, slang) guy; dude; boyfriend; significant other

• This term may be used with intimate friends or as a derogatory reference. In some contexts, the term has gang connotations. The feminine form, vata, is also used by Chicano prostitutes in the United States to refer to a woman who owes them money.

• “vato”, in Diccionario de americanismos [Dictionary of Americanisms] (in Spanish), Association of Academies of the Spanish Language [Spanish: Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española], 2010

From Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *batu, from Proto-Austronesian *batu.

vato

1. stone