roach coach
1
9.3
- noun
- /roʊtʃ koʊtʃ/
- Slang
:
camión de comida
- At a roach coach - intercut as needed.
Examples
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Those were poor Mexican people in a roach coach.
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The roach coach offers a variety of tasty tacos and burritos for just a few dollars.
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Those were poor Mexican people in a roach coach.
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My buddy Martin hooked me up with his uncle's old roach coach.
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Jeepers creepers it's the roach coach.
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At lunchtime, many workers prefer to eat from a roach coach parked nearby.
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She was excited to find a roach coach selling gourmet grilled cheese and tomato soup.
Synonyms
A small roadside stall that sells grilled and smoked food
How Formal
Surface Forms
Morphology
roach + coach
While 'coach' clearly denotes a vehicle and 'roach' evokes cockroach/filth, the move from those constituents to the specific idea of an inexpensive mobile food vendor is a slangy, metaphorical extension rather than straightforward composition. A B1 learner who knows both words might guess a dirty or cheap vehicle, but would not reliably infer 'food truck/mobile vendor' without prior exposure, so the expression is only partially transparent.
Etymology
The slang term roach coach may come from a joking image: a small, cheap street vehicle so untidy that roaches might live near it, while coach simply names the vehicle. So today roach coach means a mobile 'food truck' that sells quick, often 'cheap' food.