Spanish Word of the Day

What you gon' do with all that junk?
¿Qué vas a hacer con todo eso?

All that junk inside your trunk?
Toda esa chatarra dentro de tu baúl?

I used "all of this" as a euphemism for "all that junk"

"chatarra" means "junk", but is often associated with "junk food". It may not be a good translation either.


I'ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,
Yo voy a hacer, hacer, hacer, hacer, que te borracha,

Get you love drunk off my hump.
Cómo te gusta Borracho tomando mis nalgas.

My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
Mis nalgas, mis nalgas, mis nalgas, mis nalgas, mis nalgas,

My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely little lumps. (Check it out)
Mis nalgas, mis nalgas, mis nalgas, mis pequeños bultos encantadora. (Check it out)

Quote: Pacomartin

Mis nalgas, mis nalgas, mis nalgas, mis pequeños bultos encantadora. (Check it out)

I'm glad somebody picked up on my reference in the ejemplo!

Fecha: 26-11-12
Palabra: Zigzagear

This is one obvious what it means, but I couldn't resist using it.

The question for the advanced readers is whether Spanish adopted the English term, vise versa, or both adopted it from some third language.

Ejemplo time.

El jugador zigzagueó a través de el campo despues de marcando un ensayo. = The player zigzaged across the field before scoring a touchdown.

Quote: Wizard

The question for the advanced readers is whether Spanish adopted the English term, vise versa, or both adopted it from some third language.

English adapted it from French or German over 300 years ago. Spanish then took it from English. It is not from Latin.

Quote: Wizard

El jugador zigzagueó a través de el campo despues de marcando un ensayo. = The player zigzaged across the field before scoring a touchdown.

"The player zigzaged across the field after being marking a term paper"? or ""The player zigzaged across the field after being marking an essay"?

I think you were going for "El jugador zigzagueó a través DEL campo ANTES de ANOTAR UN TOUCHDOWN"

Quote: Nareed

I think you were going for "El jugador zigzagueó a través DEL campo ANTES de ANOTAR UN TOUCHDOWN"

No excuse for the de el. I owe 20 push ups for that. I had a hard time with the proper word for "score," but marcar seemed like the best option according to the dictionary. According to SpanishDict.com, the word for "touchdown" is ensayo. However, I grant you that on Spanish radio in Las Vegas they do say "touchdown," as well as using a lot of other English terminology.

Quote: Wizard

No excuse for the de el. I owe 20 push ups for that.

It's not wrong to use "de el," but it makes for clumsy reading.

Quote:

I had a hard time with the proper word for "score," but marcar seemed like the best option according to the dictionary.

Not bad. Marcar and Anotar mean pretty much the same thing. But Marcar, in sports, also means to cover, as in covering a receiver downfield. So...

Quote:

According to SpanishDict.com, the word for "touchdown" is ensayo.

I don't see how. Seriously, "Ensayo" means "essay," "rehearsal," and "assay." As "essay," it can be used for term paper or homework.

Quote:

However, I grant you that on Spanish radio in Las Vegas they do say "touchdown," as well as using a lot of other English terminology.

By long-standing convention in Mexico the terms are either "Touchdown" or "Anotación." The latter is sued lamost solely by a pednatic purist of an announcer who's not as good as he thinks he is. After all, "anotación," means "score."

Quote: Wizard

No excuse for the de el.

Do not form contractions if the 'El' is part of the name or you mean subject pronoun él.
Es de El Salvador.
Es la casa de él. (It is his house.)

Otherwise use the contraction
Es la casa del hombre alto.

The only other contraction in Spanish is "a+el"=al

Fecha: 27-11-12
Palabra: Pinzar Punzar

Today's SWD means to prick. A similar word is pinchar, which is an easy cognate of pinch.

Ejemplo time.

Pinzé el pulgar cuando traté cortar unas rosas. = I pricked my thumb when I tried to cut some roses.

Hopefully nobody will say it should be mi pulgar. I've ALWAYS been taught that body parts are never possesive in Spanish, although when I try to explain that to native speakers here they all look at me like I'm from Mars.

Quote: Wizard

Today's SWD means to prick.

Not according to the dictionary. It means either to hold with pliers or pincers, or to pinch. That makes sense, as the word for pliers is "pinzas."

To prick would be "pUnzar." Of course you can claim the i and u are next to each other on the keyboard and you serendipitously made a typo that brought up another real word....

Quote:

Pinzé el pulgar cuando traté cortar unas rosas. = I pricked my thumb when I tried to cut some roses.

Notwithstanding your next sentence, your example above means "I pricked the thumb..." So we don't know whose thumb, or even whether it's someone's thumb (you may be referring to something called the thumb for some reason). So "ME corté el pulgar..."

Next, whether you meant pUnzar or pInzar, it's not the right verb used. Punzar isn't used much to begin with (I'd never come across "pinzar"), and when it is it's almost always in reference to knives. It's also another journalistic pretension, so instead of saying "cuchillo" or something like that, they'll say "arma punzante" or "arma punzo-cortante," <sigh>

Finally, it's "...cuando trate DE cortar.

My guess is that Nareed will call recognize the common noun, "pinza" as a clamp, but she will refer to the verb, "pinzar" as a "dictionary word".

The problem with "pinchar" is that it's vulgar meaning has overtaken it's original definition making it unusable in polite company.


A "pinza" seems to include what is normally referred to in English as a "clamp","pinchers", "wire cutters" as well as "tweezers". The word "clamp" is based on an Old English word, while "tweezers" is from a corruption of a French word "étui" or a small bag. In English the word originally referred to the small lady's bag, but now refers to the implement that was commonly in the bag.