Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

poncho

UK/ˈpɒn.tʃəʊ/US/ˈpɑn.t͡ʃoʊ/
nounB1+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,819 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: ponchos

A poncho is a blanket with a hole for the head. Wear a poncho, a woollen poncho, a rain poncho.

The design is unbeatable for rain because air moves freely underneath and nothing needs fastening, which is why it survives as emergency waterproof gear. It came from the Andes, and the name is a Quechua word taken into Spanish.

Albert Racinet · Public domain

Definitions of poncho

  1. 1nounponchoA blanket with a hole for the head.B1+

    “When the rain started, we pulled plastic ponchos over our heads and kept walking.”

poncho is a garment.

Where it comes from

Spanish poncho comes from Quechua punchu, the Andean garment.

  1. Quechua

    punchu

  2. Spanish

    poncho

  3. English, today

    poncho

Spanish poncho, from Quechua punchu. In sense “rubber rain poncho”, attested 1845, used for non-South American garments in the United States and England from 1850s, popularized by US Western expeditions and military from 1850s, particularly after World War II (1940s).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Clothes & Fashion

Practise this word

poncho in the wild

  • A rain poncho is made from a watertight material designed to keep the body dry from the rain.

    Poncho

  • A chamanto (Mapudungun: chama, woolen fabric) is a traditional decorative garment from central Chile, similar to a poncho and woven in silk thread and wool.

    Chamanto

  • Traditionally, Chilean festive ponchos incorporate colors such as grey, brown, red, black, and white.

    Chamanto

  • While more heavy than ponchos used in central Chile and the Pampas the Poncho chilote is warmer and maintains its warmth even if it gets wet.

    Chilote poncho

  • A ruana (possibly from Spanish ruana "ragged" or Chibcha ruana "Land of Blankets") is a poncho-style outer garment native to the Colombian and Venezuelan Andes.

    Ruana

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.