Turista

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An intestinal illness with diarrhea that affects visitors after they drink water or eat food unfamiliar to their bodies in a foreign country
2. A stomach infection causing loose stools that commonly strikes travelers in Mexico and other regions with unfamiliar water and food
3. Diarrhea contracted by people visiting a foreign land, most often in Mexico, through contaminated food or drink

Etymology: Spanish "turista" is a loanword that came into the language from English, where "tourist" was the source. Its sense of "diarrhea in travelers" is a jokey extension of the ordinary meaning: the traveler is the one who gets the stomach trouble, and the word for the person became a name for the ailment they catch abroad. The English "tourist" is itself the older base, and the Spanish borrowing carried the word across the Atlantic and into daily speech in Spanish-speaking countries, where it became the common everyday term for this condition. The route runs from an English word for a traveler, through Spanish, and back into the vocabulary of people who go abroad.