Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word tonto. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word tonto, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say tonto in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word tonto you have here. The definition of the word tonto will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition oftonto, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
He told the businessmen that the law that required the certification by the President was ‘tonto’.
1985 Jan. 31, Listener, p. 34:
His two heroes are both ex-FO types and both terminally tonto about cricket.
2011, Gil McNeil, Stand by Your Man, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN:
Yes, and then I got drunk one night and snogged one of his friends, and he went tonto.
2014, Ben Elton, Time and Time Again, Random House, →ISBN:
AMERICA! The richest prize on the bloody planet. Gone, for want of a few paltry seats on the cross benches. George the bloody Third wasn't just mad, he was completely tonto!
Whether you're based in Cyprus or you know we do longer tours in Kenya or Oman or are busy just making it to the brigade at the moment up in Estonia, you know it's going to be a busy army and unfortunately we've got a busy adversary now in Putin. Gone full tonto, I think, as I'd say, and you know that's going to be quite... We've got 1,000 people on standby.
Because of the Native American sense of Tonto popularized by its use as the name of the sidekick of the Lone Ranger, even as a Spanish loanword this term can be understood as a racial slur in English, due to the translation from Spanish to stupid or slow witted. However the word is also found in the Apache language and here translates into “wild one”
Uncertain. Latin attonitus has been proposed, but there are phonological difficulties, namely unexpected loss of initial /a/ and lack of diphthongization; cf. the expected outcome atuendo. Tonto may have an expressive or onomatopoeic origin. Another hypothesis is that it derives from *tontum, a 'vulgar' past participle for Latin tondeo(“to shear”). Compare Italiantonto, Portuguesetonto, and Romaniantont, tânt.
Although in some contexts zonzo, bobo, tonto, menso, culero, tarado, idiota, imbécil, estúpido and pendejo may be synonyms, in most contexts they have a different degree of intensity, with zonzo having the mildest connotation, increasing in intensity in that rough order, to estúpido and pendejo, which have the most offensive meaning.
Badia i Margarit, Antoni M. (ed.) 2006. Homenatge de l'IEC a Joan Coromines, en el centenari de la seva naixença. Barcelona: Institut d'estudis Catalans. Pages 68–70.