🥔 Without skin 🧢 A poor person 🧒 A street kid

pelado

9.9

A poor person or someone who is bald, used informally

noun

Offensive

: pelado

The old man was known in the neighborhood as pelado, struggling to make ends meet despite his hardworking nature.
El pelado
Pelado/El Ruso

Examples

In the town, they often referred to him as pelado because of his shiny head and humble lifestyle.
During the meeting, he jokingly called himself pelado, relating to his lack of hair and his financial difficulties.
El Pelado/El Ruso's standing as an outsider, in other words, is somehow related to his ability to perceive extraordinary.

Academic text (1995)
Throughout his tale, El Pelado/El Ruso's own sexual attraction to the young girl is made patent, first in his succinctly lyrical introduction of her:

Academic text (1995)
It will be remembered that at the beginning of the story, the speaker introduces himself as the bearer of two sobriquets, "El Pelado" and "El Ruso."

Academic text (1995)
Even if such a procedure were carried out by an expert, nevertheless, effectively tagging El Pelado/El Ruso as psychologically disturbed, the fact that he exists only as a character in a work of fiction would prevent such a verdict from ever being proven conclusively.

Academic text (1995)

Surface Forms

pelado singular

pelados plural

Etymology

Pelado comes from the old Latin pilus 'hair' and originally meant 'without hair', so it meant 'bald'. Because being 'bare' can also mean having nothing, people used pelado as slang for a poor person, which is why it can mean someone poor or bald.