Pipil

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An Indigenous people of El Salvador and parts of Guatemala who descend from the Nahua peoples of central Mexico ; the Nahuat language historically spoken by that community
2. A Mesoamerican Indigenous group living mainly in western El Salvador with Nahua ancestry ; the Uto-Aztecan tongue that this group has traditionally spoken
3. Indigenous inhabitants of El Salvador whose roots lie in Nahua migrations from Mexico ; a Nahuan language belonging to the Uto-Aztecan family spoken by those people

Etymology: The Pipil are an Indigenous people of El Salvador, and their name is a Nahuatl word. The Pipil spoke a variety of Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, and their name is presumably taken from Classical Nahuatl "pīpiltin," the plural of "pilli," meaning "noble" or "child." Their name thus points to a self-description in which the people are the "nobles" or "children" of a lineage, though the exact sense intended by the name's bearers is not recorded. The name is applied from outside rather than by the people themselves in any surviving record, which is common for ethnonyms that enter European languages through colonial or scholarly writing. Because the term is used as a noun for a group of people, its plural form is the normal one in English, and it is often used with the definite article when referring to the people collectively.