PIPILA

[David L. Frye]

There is unanimity among Mexican dictionaries that pipila (accent on the
first i -- pardon my primitive email) means "female turkey," with a
secondary meaning of "prostitute." E.g. Santamaria's Diccionario de
mexicanismos: "f. La hembra del guajolote. 2. fig. Mujer publica." Also in
the online "Diccionario de Regionalismos de la Lengua Espanola"
(http://www.hispanicus.com/diccionario/): "pipila (Mejico): Pava, hembra
del guajolote. Prostituta." Santamaria also has a shorter entry for the
male version, pipilo (accent still on first syllable): "el guajolotito
tierno." The Dictionary of Chicano Spanish has a sexual slang meaning for
this as well: "gigolo; effeminate man; male homosexual."

Santamaria derives pipila from Nahuatl pipilpipil, defined (Molina) as
"muchachuelos," i.e. children, kids. Interestingly, since I rarely heard
pipila in rural San Luis Potosi but rather cocono and cocona as the common
words for young turkeys, I looked up the latter and found that Santamaria
derived it from Nahuatl cocone, which is the plural of conetl, ni~no
(child). I.e. two common Mexican words for "turkey"(singular) would
derive from Nahuatl words for "children" (plural). I suppose you could
hypothesize that Nahuatl-speakers referred to the gaggles of turkey
chicks in the plural as "children" and Spanish-speakers Spanished those
words as "pipila" and "cocono", misunderstanding plural for singular. Not
the first (or last) time that's happened.

Another intriguing link here lies in the general word for turkey,
guajolote (in Mexican Spanish) or huehxolotl (in Nahuatl). Francis
Kartunnen notes that the second element of this word echoes xolotl, "page,
male servant (paje, mozo, criado, esclavo)," though "there is no obvious
connection in sense." But maybe there is a connection? The secondary,
figurative sense of guajolote is "bobo, sandio, necio, tonto" -- obvious
enough if you've ever been around turkeys, but also similar to the Spanish
(and Nahuatl, I wonder?) view of "mozos," whether we're talking about male
servants or about children. I'm reminded of the Cuban mother who
reprimands her wayward son by calling him "guanajo!" (Cuban Spanish for
guajolote).


David Frye, University of Michigan (dfrye at umich.edu)