machismo

The noun machismo describes a quality of manliness that goes way over the top: think the big-armed character Bluto from “Popeye.”

The overblown masculinity of a manly man is what machismo is all about. A professional wrestler, with his over-developed, muscular body, has machismo, and so does a tough Marine who believes that real men never cry. Machismo comes from the word macho, which in Spanish simply means “male,” but in English has had connotations of machismo since the 1920s, when it was first used to mean “tough guy.”