In full flower

In a country where morning glories inch their way along anything that will bear their weight, where oleanders thrive in  stony ground and jasmine froths round every doorway it isn’t surprising that flor – flower should crop up so often in Spanish.

The prime of life, for instance, is la flor de la vida – the flower of life. The cream of society is renamed la flor y nata de la sociedad – the flower and cream of society and in this instance flor means the best of or the most superior part of something.   And, as in English, flor is also the bloom found on plums or grapes.

A flor de means level with and when everything gets on top of them, the Spanish complain tengo los nervios a flor de piel – my nerves are on the surface, an uncomfortably graphic way to describe that unrestful state of mind and body.  A flor de tierra makes a subtle shift to mean just below the ground, however.

Florecer means to flower while floreciente – blooming can also refer, as it does in English, to flourishing looks or booming business which is logical enough, since anyone doing well financially generally manages to look gorgeous and glossy anyway.



Azahar looks as good as it smells



Florecer also translates to blossom, for which there is neither a specific verb or noun, so almond and apple blossom are flor de almendro and flor de manzano although orange blossom has its own delicious translation of azahar.  

As well as being the past participle of florecer, when used as an adjective florecido corresponds to gone to seed horticulturally rather than metaphorically. Pan florecido is bad news, too, and means mouldy bread.

Florido can mean both flowering, flowery or florid but the only way to convey florid’s red-faced English description is rojizo, which rather  fails to get across the necessary hint of bluster or sweatiness.

Florear means to adorn or decorate with flowers so floreado means flowery without necessarily implying affected or pretentious (although it often does).

Un florete is a fencer’s foil but una floritura is an unnecessary embellishment to a painting, piece of writing or music and una florera is a flower-girl of both the strewing and selling variety. 

Un florero is a vase, not forgetting a slightly scornful description for a trophy wife or a woman whose value is  strictly decorative.

A bunch of flowers is un ramo de flores and at this point the linguistically imaginative might be forgiven for assuming – wrongly - that una ramera is yet another flower girl. Instead, the term is one that has been in use since the XV century when a working girl advertised her trade by fixing a bouquet to her balcony or at her door, with the pretence that she sold flowers, not herself.

The strategy was not entirely successful, though, and to this day the word is still used as a label by the judgemental and/or elderly for the kind of woman they would unhesitatingly describe as “no better than she should be.”

Oleanders thrive in stony ground

Catcalls

It’s appropriate that a pet-shop should be a bird-shop – pajarería because the Spanish spent small fortunes on canaries or racing pigeons even when times were hard and non-flying domestic animals had to earn their food and houseroom. 

A good hunting (or poaching) dog was an even better investment than an operatic canary or jet-propelled pigeon but a cat was seldom anything other than a commonplace mouser. 

Velázquez put this in a nutshell over four centuries ago by devoting some of the right-hand corner of Las Meninas to a courtly, corpulent and long-suffering mastiff – mastín who patiently ignores the foot a child is planting on its back. 

Flora posing for Velázquez

Take a look at Las Hilanderas, however, and you’ll see a perfectly presentable tabby – gato atigrado with a nice white dicky - pechera relegated to the workroom floor.  In the spinners’ favour, though, is the way one woman looks as though she about to stroke the cat - or is she going to retrieve something from the floor? 

Un gato is a cat, una gata is a female cat, a tomcat is as un gato macho and a doctored, neutered male is un gato capado (or castrado if you like calling a spade a spade). 

People from Madrid are sometimes called gatos, a nickname allegedly earned in 1085 when Madrid was Magerit and under siege by the troops of Alfonso VI.  One soldier who was such a good climber that he earned himself the nickname of Gato scaled the fortress walls, then lowered ropes so his less catlike comrades could join him.  The fortress was taken, the Moorish flag removed and Magerit was on its way to becoming Madrid.

A non-animal, non-human gato is the jack used to prop up a car when changing a tyre and un gatillo is a trigger as well as the obvious kitten. 

Minino is the equivalent of puss and the traditional Micifuz corresponds to the equally traditional Tibby bestowed on my grandmother’s succession of cats.  Micifuz looks endearingly fuzzier and furrier although the Spanish pronunciation sounds rather like the spitting of an irate feline.

Gatear and andar a gatas (literally to walk like a cat) both mean to crawl or move on all fours and catlike is translated as felino, although a catty woman is described as maliciosa (unfair to cats) or, if she spices up the cattiness with gossip, chismosa. 

Some cat-connotations are lost in translation, so a catwalk is una pasarela or un andamio, depending on whether it is trodden by models or workmen and  a catcall is un abucheo.  To give a catcall requires the verb abuchear but a catnap dozes off into una cabezadita, literally a little nod, and catnip is nébeda or hierba gatera.  A cat burglar goes about his business as un balconero although a sneakthief is a rodent-like ratero. 

To let the cat out of the bag is delatar and to rain cats and dogs is llover a cántaros, literally jugsful.  Instead of smelling a rat, the Spanish say aquí hay gato encerrado – there’s a cat shut up here and dar gato por liebre – to give cat for hare is similar to selling, not buying, a pig in a poke.

Tiresome people who quibble or split hairs are said to look for three feet on the cat – buscar tres pies al gato.  You’d imagine any half-wit could easily find four but the erudite maintain that the pie in question is the metre in poetry and the saying refers to the futility of locating three syllables in a two-syllable word like gato.  And that’s a rather smart example of hair-splitting in itself.

Flora demonstrates how to catnap