Billy goat stuff

Possibly because Spain was mainly agricultural before it was transformed by tourism and the building boom, many obscenities and sexual euphemisms originate in the farmyard.

For this reason it’s not a bad idea to be circumspect if bringing rabbit – conejo, eggs – huevos and even straw – paja into the conversation.  You may mention them without raising so much as an eyebrow, let alone a laugh, when shopping but outside the market or supermarket they are apt to bring a faint twitch even to the most solemn Spanish lips.

And when asking for chicken it is wiser to ask for pollo.  Don’t be tempted to change the -o into an -a believing this turns the word into something approximate to a hen unless you want to provoke ribald hilarity. 

Play safe and ask for gallina, a word that leads a demure double life as slang for money and turns up in carne de gallina, literally hen’s flesh but actually goose pimples.

Corcho means cork but the exclamation ¡corcho! substitutes a ruder, cruder but similar-sounding expression of surprise, anger or – occasionally – admiration.  This is based on the word for which conejo is a euphemism (and no, I’m not going to spell it out).

Away from the farmyard and corral ¡jolín! or ¡jolínes! replace a much-used verb that corresponds to the f-word in English.

Even these versions were once considered a little strong for mixed company but are now used by five-year-olds, while what they replace pepper everyday conversations and are no longer bleeped out on the radio or television. 

In a formerly devout Catholic country, complicated blasphemy remains a satisfying way of letting off steam, but ¡Jesús! offends no-one and is how you say Bless you! after a sneeze.

The rudest way to tell someone to go away or get lost in English advises him or her to go off and make a personal contribution to the world population.  This isn’t said in Spanish – quite the reverse, in fact - and instead there is a comprehensive translation for all our lesser, but still obscene, English requests to leave the scene.

This is so anatomically explicit that the recipient of the more mealy-mouthed and bowdlerised ¡vete a tomar por el saco! will still make a hasty exit while being left in no doubt that they’ve gone and got your goat. 

You can translate to get someone’s goat almost literally as cabrear or, when you are the one who is seething, cabrearse.  It is an inelegant verb, but that does not prevent people from using it, or the noun cabreo – rage, a monumental sulk or a foul mood.

Nanny goats (plus a sheep or two)

This word is associated with cabra or goat, a female word for a female animal because most of the adults in a corral (the same in both languages) are nanny-goats. They are kept for their milk and their chivatos – kids towards the production of which a corral usually houses a billy goat - un macho cabrío.

There are occasions when the suffix -ón changes a female noun into something bigger, better and masculine – taza (cup) for instance produces the innocuous tazón (breakfast bowl).

Don’t do this with cabra, though. Just as pollo is best left alone, so is cabra because by adding the -ón suffix you produce cabrón – a wounding insult. 

Those intent on causing offence get across the same idea with adjective cornudo – horned but either way, the man it describes is still a cuckold and wears a cuckold’s horns – los cuernos.

This might sound picturesquely outdated to an English-speaker’s ears, but it continues to pack a punch with a Spanish male and prompts as much indignation as insulting his mother’s morals.

Nastier till is un cornudo consentido – a consenting cuckold because adultery can happen in the best of families, but to turn a blind eye or, even worse, to profit from it, is held to be intolerable.