pupusa

Borrowed from Spanish pupusa, from Pipil pupusawa (“swollen”).

pupusa (plural pupusas)

1. A thick, hand-rolled maize tortilla.
   • 2017 January 26, Marissa Clifford, “Why doesn’t MacArthur Park gentrify?”, in Curbed‎^[1]:

     Below is the last photo I took of my old apartment in MacArthur Park, a neighborhood whose name has been synonymous with danger for decades. From Chelsea Handler’s questionable inquiry about bodies in the park’s lake, made whilst buying pupusas from a street vendor on her Netflix special, to the “Gangs” header on its Wikipedia page, MacArthur Park has an infamous reputation both in pop culture and in Los Angeles. The name MacArthur Park refers both to its central park and the 2.72 mile radius surrounding it—a neighborhood also called Westlake that has a long and complicated history of overcrowding, gentrification, and displacement.

   • 2021 August 26, M. Willis, “We'll Always Have Tom Paris” (0:18 from the start), in Star Trek: Lower Decks‎^[2], season 2, episode 3, spoken by Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid):

     “Computer, pupusa, hot.” “User not recognized.” “[laughing] It's Ensign Boimler. Come on.” “User not recognized.” “Can you, like, hurry it up?” “Computer, any food, hot, please.” “User not recognized.” [laughs]

• upupas

Borrowed from Pipil pupusawa (“swollen”). However, linguist Alan King, who has worked on Pipil Nawat, asserts this word is spurious, invented by Salvadoran linguist Pedro Geoffroy Rivas. The word is also absent from Lyle Campbell's lexicon.

• IPA^(key): /puˈpusa/ [puˈpu.sa]

• Audio (El Salvador):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -usa
• Syllabification: pu‧pu‧sa

pupusa f (plural pupusas)

1. (Central America) a stuffed tortilla
2. (Central America, vulgar, slang) pussy, vulva

• → English: pupusa

• “pupusa”, 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