Piña Colada With or Without the Tilde: How Is It Spelled?

Put simply: most dictionaries keep the ñ, and pina colada is the spelling of a British learner's dictionary, an American wire service and the bartenders' own list. A reader understands either. What the tilde adds is the Spanish word for pineapple and, in the dictionaries, a y sound after the n.

AccentPad read each verdict on 2026-10-25 from a page that answered its check. Merriam-Webster and Cambridge answered HTTP 403 that day. Neither the Diccionario de americanismos nor the Diccionario del español de México has an entry for the drink, so the table has no Spanish-language row.

Strained pineapple: what do the two words of piña colada say?

Piña is pineapple and colada is strained, so the piña colada meaning, word for word, is strained pineapple. The American Heritage Dictionary, Dictionary.com and the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary all give that literal sense. Wikipedia ties it to how the drink is made, with freshly pressed pineapple juice that has been strained.

Wiktionary's Spanish entry splits the name into piña, pineapple, and colada, sifted, from the verb colar, to sift or strain. It gives the Spanish pronunciation as /ˌpiɲa koˈlada/.

On its own, colada means other things in Latin American Spanish. The academies' Diccionario de americanismos lists senses of its own, none of them a drink of rum:

• In Colombia and Ecuador, a thick food of maize flour cooked in hot water or milk with sugar or salt.
• In the Dominican Republic, Argentina and Uruguay, getting into a party or a show without an invitation or a ticket.
• In Guatemala, a muddle or a brawl.

English uses colada alone as a casual name for the cocktail, Wiktionary notes, labelling that sense informal.

What goes into a piña colada, by the bartenders' standard?

White rum, coconut cream and fresh pineapple juice. The International Bartenders Association lists the drink among its Contemporary Classics and specifies 50 ml of white rum, 30 ml of coconut cream and 50 ml of fresh pineapple juice, blended with ice in an electric blender. The garnish is a slice of pineapple with a cocktail cherry.

That is the short answer to what is in a pina colada. The association adds that a few drops of fresh lime juice were once added to taste. Slices of fresh pineapple can be used instead of the juice.

The dictionaries describe the same base. The American Heritage Dictionary defines a mixed drink of rum, coconut cream and pineapple juice, often blended with ice. Dictionary.com writes cream of coconut. It adds that the drink is usually frappéed in a blender. Dictionary.com also records a second sense, a flavour of ice cream or soft drinks made with coconut milk and pineapple juice.

How to make a pina colada in San Juan is a little different. Wikipedia gives the Puerto Rican recipe with heavy cream and frozen, freshly pressed pineapple juice. It names cream of coconut as the product most recipes use. Without rum, the drink is a virgin piña colada, a derived term Wiktionary lists.

Puerto Rico, Cuba or a magazine: where was the piña colada first named?

The drink is Puerto Rican, but the name appears in print before the recipe the island made famous. Wikipedia's account, in order:

• 1922: Travel magazine describes a piña colada of sugar, lime, ice, pineapple juice and Bacardi rum.
• 1924: National Geographic, reporting from Puerto Rico, mentions a pineapple and crushed-ice drink called piña fría, cold pineapple.
• 1950: The New York Times mentions Cuba's pina colada, of rum, pineapple and coconut milk, printed without the tilde.
• 1954: Ramón López Irizarry of the University of Puerto Rico patents a way to extract coconut cream and creates Coco López. The Caribe Hilton in San Juan says its bartender Ramón "Monchito" Marrero created the drink that year.
• 1978: Puerto Rico proclaims the cocktail its official drink.

Two more bartenders claim the invention. Ricardo García, also at the Caribe Hilton, dates his to 1953. The restaurant Barrachina credits Ramón Portas Mingot, in 1963. Dictionary.com's first-recorded date for the English word, 1920–25, sits with the magazine, not with the hotel.

Peen-yuh or pee-nuh: which spellings give which sound?

In the Oxford dictionaries, the spelling and the sound go together. The American one keeps the ñ and the y sound; the British one drops both:

• Oxford Advanced American Dictionary: /ˌpinyə kəˈlɑdə/, spelled piña.
• Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary: /ˌpiːnə kəˈlɑːdə/, spelled pina.
• Dictionary.com, American: peen-yuh koh-lah-duh, with kuh-lah- as another start for the second word.
• Collins, British: /ˈpiːnjə kəˈlɑːdə/, with the ñ in its spelling.

The American Heritage Dictionary records the whole range under one spelling: pēn′yə first, then pĭn′yə and pēn′ə. Wiktionary's English entry lists /ˌpiːnjə/ and /ˌpiːnə/ side by side. Wiktionary's Spanish transcription has one sound for the ñ of piña, /ɲ/.

So, if you say pee-nuh, pina colada is the spelling that matches you, and if you say peen-yuh, the tilde is what shows it.

Piña coladas or piñas coladas: how does the plural work in each language?

English adds one s, at the very end: piña coladas, the plural Dictionary.com prints and Wiktionary gives for the English noun. Spanish makes both words plural, piñas coladas, according to Wiktionary's Spanish entry.

Without the tilde the English plural is pina coladas. The tilde stays where it was in the singular, on the n of the first word, because the s goes on colada.

Why do a cocktail list and a hit song disagree on the tilde?

Each prints the name its own way. The International Bartenders Association titles its page Pina Colada, with no mark, the way AP style would print it. Rupert Holmes's 1979 hit, Escape (The Piña Colada Song), has the ñ in its title, and Wikipedia credits it with making the cocktail famous worldwide.

For a menu, a recipe card or a label, either spelling is understood. If no house style decides, follow the dictionaries and write piña colada, which is also how to spell pina colada if you want the Spanish word inside it.

The n with tilde page types ñ on any device, and the tilde page shows the other letters with the mark. The jalapeño and piñata word pages compare two more words spelled with ñ.