ranch

In the Spanish language of the 1500s the verb rancharse was used by soldiers in the sense “to be camped” someplace. The conquistadors who took this verb to the Americas also were familiar with a derivative noun rancho, referring originally to a camp or temporary dwelling such as a hut. Both the general sense “dwelling” and the specifically Mexican sense “small farm” were adopted into American English in the 1800s—as rancho and the more English-sounding ranch. By the late 1800s ranch was most often not a small farm but a large piece of land devoted to raising livestock—a meaning the word still maintains.