hombre

Borrowed from Spanish hombre (“man; human being”). Doublet of gome, homo, ombre, and omi.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɒmbɹeɪ/, /-bɹi/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɑmbɹeɪ/, /ˈʌmbɹeɪ/, /-bɹi/

• Audio (US):

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• Audio (General Australian):

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• Rhymes: (Received Pronunciation) -ɒmbɹeɪ
• Hyphenation: hom‧bre

hombre (plural hombres)

1. (chiefly US, in Spanish-speaking contexts, slang) A man, a chap, a guy; especially a Hispanic or Spanish man.
   • c. 1850, [Thomas] Mayne Reid, “A Group of Jarochos”, in The Guerilla^[sic] Chief, and Other Tales, London: C. H. Clarke, 13, Paternoster Row, →OCLC, page 62:

     [W]e're glad to learn that the Yankee bullet has not quite stopped your breath. You're all right, hombre!

   • 1852 March 8, E. P., “Golden Correspondence.—No. 1”, in J[oseph] M. Church, editor, Church’s Bizarre. For Fireside and Wayside, volume I, number 1 (New Series), Philadelphia, Pa.: Church & Co., 140 Chestnut Street, published 17 April 1852, →OCLC, page 9, column 2:

     That hombre now with the worn out hat, tattered shirt, and fragmentary breeches, wears a sword. Bless you, his dignity would suffer greatly without it!

   • 1995, Paul Vautin, Turn It Up!, Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, page 92:

     Coming towards us was the biggest, meanest looking hombre I'd ever seen.

   • 2010, Jon Sharpe [pseudonym], chapter 1, in Rocky Mountain Revenge (The Trailsman; no. 342), New York, N.Y.: Signet Books, New American Library, →ISBN:

     The foreman. As tough an hombre who ever lived. If Mr. Bell had sent Jackson instead of me, he'd take your rifle and beat you half to death with it.

   • 2016, Lawrence Winkler, “Bajada”, in Orion’s Cartwheel (Cartwheels Quadrilogy; 1), Victoria, B.C.: First Choice Books, →ISBN, page 22:

     There was a pause I didn't like, punctuated by shrieks of shrill laughter from the hombres at the bar. Only Mexicans can laugh like that.

   • 2025 October 20, Carlos Lozada, “You Caught Me. I’m Speaking Spanish.”, in The New York Times‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:

     Spanish has become a sanctioned indicator of potential criminality in the United States of America. The language of Miguel de Cervantes and Andrés Cantor, the world’s fourth most spoken tongue, has been deemed the sound of bad hombres in our midst.

     (Can we archive this URL?)

• hombre on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• home

From Old Navarro-Aragonese hombre~home, from Latin hominem.

• IPA^(key): /ˈombɾe/
• Syllabification: hom‧bre
• Rhymes: -ombɾe

hombre m (plural hombres)

1. man
2. a 17th-century Spanish card game (c. 1650-1660), usually played by three persons with a pack of 40 cards.

   the lone player in this game undertaking to win the pool against two defenders.

• “hombre”, in Aragonario, diccionario castellano–aragonés (in Spanish)

• IPA^(key): /ɔ̃bʁ/

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

  (file)

• Audio (France (Somain)):

  (file)

• Homophones: hombres, ombre, ombres, ombrent

hombre m (plural hombres)

1. a kind of card game from Spain

• → English: ombre

• “hombre”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

• ombre, ome, omme, homme
• uamne (11th century, Glosas Emilianenses)

Inherited from Latin hominem.

• IPA^(key): /ˈombɾe/

hombre m (plural hombres)

1. man
   • 14th c., Crónica de San Juan de la Peña:

     SEGVNT QVE HAVE / mos leydo en muytos liuros el primʳo hombŕ q̀ se poblo / en España hauia nombre Tubal, del qual yxio la ge- / na͡con d'los ybers.^[1]

     As we have read in many books, the first man to settle in Spain was named Tubal, from whom issued the race of the Iberians.

• Aragonese: ombre

• Nagore Laín, Francho (2021), Vocabulario de la crónica de San Juan de la Peña (versión aragonesa, s. XIV), Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, page 268

• honbre, ombre, onbre (obsolete)

Inherited from Old Spanish omne, from Latin hominem, homō, from Old Latin hemō, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰmṓ (“earthling”). The Old Spanish form omne was first dissimilated to omre and then a gliding sound -b- arose before the -r-. Compare the same development in hembra, nombre, hambre and costumbre.

• IPA^(key): /ˈombɾe/ [ˈõm.bɾe]

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ombɾe
• Syllabification: hom‧bre

hombre m (plural hombres)

1. man, (adult male human)

   Synonyms: caballero, señor

   Antonym: mujer

   Sé (un) hombre! ― Man up!

   • 2020 September 10, Alexis Benveniste, “El listado Fortune 500 ahora tiene un número récord de mujeres CEO: apenas 39”, in CNN en Español‎^[2]:

     Fraser se une a otras 38 mujeres en la lista de CEOs de Fortune 500, conformada en su mayoría por blancos y hombres.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. man, (all humans collectively); mankind, humankind

   Synonym: ser humano

3. (anthropology, archaeology, paleontology) man, (individual of the species Homo sapiens, the genus Homo, or the subtribe Hominina)

   Synonyms: humano, persona

4. (colloquial) husband

   Synonym: marido

5. (gay slang) top

   Synonym: activo

6. ombre (Spanish card game)

• Chavacano: hombre
• → English: hombre
• → French: hombre
  • → English: ombre
• → Papiamentu: hòmber

¡hombre!

1. man!
2. hey!
3. oh, come on!

• “hombre”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025