Word.ws English Dictionary

pishtaco

pishtaco noun: a mythical white male demon in South American folklore, who steals and eats the bodyfat of indigenous South Americans, or cuts up their flesh to convert it into food.

Noun

pishtaco (plural pishtacos)

  1. A mythical white male demon in South American folklore, who steals and eats the bodyfat of indigenous South Americans, or cuts up their flesh to convert it into food.
    • They are often told that the pishtaco is going to carry them off if they do not behave. Thus, they are taught to fear the mestizo and white man at an early age. The pishtaco also maintains conformity among adults. Individualism is not a norm ...1969, Journal of American Folklore
    • However, the pishtaco is not an Andean Minotaur. It is, rather, an indigenous Andean folk symbol of Spanish, and later criollo, colonialist oppression. Pishtacos are represented as white foreigners, ...1997, Milos Kokotovic, Confronting Postmodernism

Examples of pishtaco in a sentence

  • For this part of the operation, the pishtaco is said to import specialized equipment from the United States, Germany, or Japan.2005, Don Kulick, Anne Meneley, Fat, →ISBN:
  • This explains why the first pishtaco figures in the legend were priests and soldiers.2008, Jennifer McLagan, Fat, →ISBN, page 217:

Forms of pishtaco

pluralpishtacos
alternative formpishtaku

Origin of pishtaco

From a Quechua language term "pishtay", meaning "cut the throat of, cut up".

Questions about pishtaco

What does pishtaco mean?
Pishtaco means a mythical white male demon in South American folklore, who steals and eats the bodyfat of indigenous South Americans, or cuts up their flesh to convert it into food.
How do you use pishtaco in a sentence?
For this part of the operation, the pishtaco is said to import specialized equipment from the United States, Germany, or Japan.
What part of speech is pishtaco?
Pishtaco is a noun.
What is the plural of pishtaco?
The plural of pishtaco is pishtacos.

Words near pishtaco in the dictionary

  1. pishogue
  2. pishogues
  3. Pishon
  4. pishpash
  5. pishposh
  6. pishtaco
  7. pishtacos
  8. pishtak
  9. pishtaks
  10. pishtaku
  11. pishtakus

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pishtaco (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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