Definition of "pinta" [pinta]

• A contagious skin disease prevalent in tropical America, caused by a spirochete (Treponema carateum) and marked by extreme thickening and spotty discoloration of the skin. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "For example, the use by the Milk Board in Britain of the word pinta is symbolic to residents but not readily meaningful to visitors from, say, America, where milk is usually sold in quarts, not pints, to whom pinta may look more like a female pinto (horse) than a "pint o 'milk.""
• "In Lath America an infectious disease called pinta starts with bluish or red pimples and later leaves pale or white patches."
• "If the names of his ships had been listed in another way, they would have made the phrase "Holy Mary (Santa María) paints (pinta) the girl (niña)"."