rancho

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a simple rural hut or shelter, especially one used by herders or farm workers in Spanish America

   The travelers spent the night in a rancho roofed with branches and thatch.

2. 2
   noun

   a ranch or large grazing farm in the southwestern United States or Spanish America

   Horses and cattle grazed on the open land around the rancho.

Borrowed from Spanish rancho ("camp, hut, group dining together"). The English ranch is a later shortening of the same word; nineteenth-century travel writing often retains rancho for a South American hut or cattle farm.

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