Evergreen

The green at a golf course obligingly remains el green but climate, not to mention culture, means you won’t come across anything resembling a European English-speaker’s village green. 

What you will find in many rural districts – little-used and all but forgotten except during local fiestas – is la era or threshing ground that was (and still is) an ideal shape and ideally located for the annual knees-up.

As an adjective, verde  brings few surprises and is usable in most green situations: un vestido verde – a green dress; una almohada verde - a green cushion; una manzana verde – a green apple and – increasingly – the  energía verde which is green energy. 

Thus a green sleeve is una manga verde and the old English song Greensleeves becomes, logically enough, Mangas Verdes.  The saying a buenas horas mangas verdes is one hundred per cent Spanish, though, and harks back to the Santa Hermandad,  15th century police officers who wore a type of uniform with wide green sleeves. 

They were notoriously incapable of getting a move on and habitually arrived late at crime scenes, so when said reprovingly to someone who turns up or does something too late, ¡a buenas horas mangas verdes! implies and about time too!



Green grapes are white: uvas blancas



Verde won’t be what you’re looking for to translate green grapes because, despite their unmistakable colour, the Spanish regard them as white: uvas blancas. 

 On the other hand, as in English, verde is adequate for unripe fruit or vegetables: una patata verde – a green potato. It can also describe a person who is inexpert or a plan or project which has yet to come to fruition. 

The saying dar la luz verde has only been around since the introduction of traffic lights, and means to give the go ahead (literally green light).

Back to nouns, verdes used to be slang for thousand peseta notes but with a capital letter, Verdes are Greens in the political sense although the non-specific greens we were told to eat up when we were little are verdura. 

Greens can also be referred to as the even more non-specific hortalizas which covers everything from spinach – espinacas to root vegetables although the horticulturally-knowledgeable call these tubérculos. 

Verdor

 Verdor won’t appear on your plate, but does the dual job of meaning both greenness and greenery. 

Latin American influence means you increasingly encounter vegetables translated as vegetales although formerly this referred principally to what is green but inedible, like grass, trees or plants.

Paradoxically bars and restaurants like to list a salad sandwich as un sandwich vegetal but be prepared to meet the doughy part of the deal listed as sanuich, sanguis or even sanvis.  

Papel vegetal is the totally indigestible greaseproof paper, however, and although vegetación is a predictable vegetation the plural vegetaciones are more of an affliction: adenoids.

An evergreen tree or bush is un árbol or un arbusto de hoja perenne but if this is used an adjective describing an evergreen song it pales into un favorito. 

Un verde in these environmentally-aware times tends to be an innocuous ecologist but un viejo verde always was – and still is – a dirty old man while un chiste verde remains off-colour as a blue joke.



Catalina on patrol



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.

Chinese Puzzle

China is not what it was.  Or has it remained the same, while the rest of the world has changed? 

This is something of a puzzle in itself and is illustrated by the way that China figures prominently in so many figures of Spanish speech still used by older generations.

Everybody knows that un cuento chino – a Chinese story is a tall story but anyone with few assets and pressing debts will probably be eligible for a free bus pass if they complain tengo más trampas que una pelicula china. Seldom used by the young, it loses its jaunty desperation in translation, sounding nearer to farce than tragedy: I’ve more snares than a Chinese film. 

Cities and large towns in Spain still possess un barrio chino – Chinatown although it will be a red light district rather than a neighbourhood where restaurants serve Peking Duck. 

Less specialised on both counts is tinta china or Indian ink while any work – trabajo involving considerable time and patience is a politically-incorrect – but still undeniably apt - trabajo de chinos.

¡Naranjas de la China! – Chinese oranges! (kumquats, according to some) conveys the same scepticism of that’ll be the day. 

China also possesses a secondary Spanish meaning of fine china or porcelain but the everyday type produced in Staffordshire, for instance, is loza. 

China with a capital letter refers to the country itself but because adjectives of nationality are written without capital letters in Spanish, una china means a small pebble as well as a Chinese woman. 

Chino is the Chinese language, but un chino is a Chinese man although the term has acquired the meaning of a Chinese restaurant now that there are so many in Spain.  More recently, un chino is also understood to mean a shop with Chinese owners which sells an enormous variety of objects at very low prices.

Jugar a los chinos refers to a game often played by carousing adults to determine who pays for a meal or the next round of drinks.  It entails guessing the combined number of small objects concealed in a fellow-player’s closed fist, with the least consistent guesser footing the bill.  

Anyone investigating the equivalent of a Chinese puzzle will find this is un rompecabezas although this word covers all types of posers – even jigsaws - and not the fiendishly taxing kind that English-speakers associate with this kind of brainteaser.

La quinta china is the back of beyond. It sounds as though it could be the Chinese estate, a group of recruits called up to go to China or a scrambled version of el quinto pino – the fifth pine, yet another way to describe the back of beyond. 

Some people trace this to 18th century Madrid when the Paseo de Recoletos (still there, incidentally) was one of the city’s principal streets.  This led north into what is now the Paseo de la Castellana (temporarily Paseo del Generalísimo, but that’s another story) which was planted with five perfectly aligned, perfectly spaced pine trees.



Pines in Cap Negret, not Madrid



Madrid was smaller then and La Castellana was practically on the outskirts so the fifth pine – el quinto pino was, in those limited times, far enough away to be considered a very long way off.

Another faraway place, la Cochinchina, is your third option for the middle of nowhere but since  this was once the Vietnamese region whose capital is Saigon, at least you'll know how to get there.

Sweet Nothings

Una rosca can be two separate things. The first is the thread on a screw or screw top and the second is a round, biscuity sort of cake with a hole in the middle – not particularly exotic but more interesting than its distant English relation, a rusk. 

A young male who is not over-successful with the opposite sex might complain no me como ni una rosca. Literally this sad admission means I don’t get even one biscuity sort of cake etc. but implies (for want of a better way of putting it) it’s been a long time since I’ve been intimately involved with anyone.

It’s curious that such an austere turn of phrase should be chosen for such an unaustere activity, especially on pondering the euphemistic possibilities of  cakes, tarts and biscuits on view at a Spanish baker’s. 

Spaniards visiting Britain often express somewhat naive surprise at encountering so many churches in a famously secular country.  Britons react in much the same way to the many pastelerías and confiterías – cake shops that jostle with establishments providing the expected vino, tapas and paella.

Resort towns and villages boast multiple bakeries and cake shops but it is necessary to leave the coast behind to discover just how sweet Spain’s tooth is.  Order a café bombón (a shot of black coffee poured over a slug of super-sweet condensed milk) and it is invariably served with a packet of sugar in the saucer.

A sweet-toothed person is described as goloso, a pretty-sounding word that sounds less pretty if translated as greedy.  Una golosina is one translation for a sweet and un caramelo is another.  This sounds suspiciously like a caramel and it sometimes will be, but the word applies to most sweets not involving chocolate..

Much that is sweet and Spanish has a religious name or connection, possibly because so many convents maintained themselves (and still do) by producing and selling cakes and confectionary.

Huesos de santo, literally saints’ bones, are small rolls of marzipan with a sugar and yolk-based filling.  Sinfully delicious yemas de Santa Teresa are again made from egg yolks and sugar and acquired their name because, like Saint Teresa, they are associated with Ávila.

Tarta de Santiago is almond cake from Galicia which Santiago a.k.a. San Jaime Apostol – Saint James the Apostle supposedly visited, hence Santiago de Compostela in whose cathedral he is said to be buried.

Equally predictable, tarta de San Jorge is a Catalonian speciality honouring Saint George, the region’s patron saint (and England’s).

The adjective sweet is normally translated as dulce:  hogar, dulce hogar – home, sweet home but reappears in agua dulce – fresh water while pimentón dulce – paprika is described as sweet to distinguish it from hot pimentón picante.

Sweet nothings would be dulces ñoñerías although unfortunately ñoñería is irremediably linked to insipidness and fussiness, which says little for Spanish regard for romantic murmurings.

 A Spaniard would probably substitute amable, agradable for an English-speaker’s sweet person, reserving dulce for someone who is not only sweet but also gentle and charming and possessed of genuine, not synthetic, dulzura – sweetness.

Un mono is a monkey and una mona is a sugary, spicy bun eaten all year round, but topped with an unshelled hardboiled egg for Easter. 



una gatita salada



As an adjective mono or mona is appropriate for sweet, pretty children of either sex and sweet, pretty females of any age.  It also refer to the sweetness or pleasantness of any object, as in ¡qué gatita más mona! but you could just as easily exclaim ¡qué gatita más salada! and although this means what a salty little cat! everyone knows that you think she’s sweet.

All at sea

A life on the ocean wave is fine for those with sea-legs inside their sea-boots but landlubbers would agree that the Spanish show imagination by translating the sea as el mar and defining marear not only as to sail and to navigate but also to make ill, to annoy, to disturb or to bother. 

Perhaps the occasional sailor employs the verb marear to describe the risky business of going to sea but this is mostly used in circumstances which are generally anything but plain sailing.

Use of marear as well as estar mareado is a standard reaction to someone who is a nuisance: me estás mareando - you’re getting on my nerves! while ¡no me marees! is the stock injunction, don’t hassle me! Announcing estoy mareado generally conveys physical discomfort rather than state of mind and covers a wide range of queasiness: I feel sick, seasick, giddy, dizzy or simply I don’t feel too good. 

It can also be interpreted as I’ve had rather too much to drink and, as often happens with Spanish diminutives, a diminutive heralds excess and not moderation so César estaba un poco mareadito could be a charitable way of saying César was drunk.

Marear is a prime candidate for reflexiveness, but me mareo still means I am sick, seasick, giddy, dizzy or simply I don’t feel too good.

So what’s the difference between estoy mareado and me mareo?  There’s not a lot in it but there is definitely more urgency when the latter is an exclamation, and on hearing ¡me mareo! it is advisable to have brandy, smelling salts or, if the worst comes to the worst, a sick-bag at the ready.

In some circumstances mareo is a bother or a nuisance and a questioning ¿es mucho mareo? – is it much of a nuisance? is an apologetic way of indicating that you are aware of being a nuisance but are reluctant to modify or withdraw the request prompting the question. 



pleamar:  when the water laps round your neck

 

Living on the Mediterranean coast it is easy to forget that Spain has tidal coasts as well.  The noun marea means tide: marea alta - high tide and marea baja - low tide.    There are more scholarly terms, too: pleamar when the water laps round your neck, and bajamar when it’s licking round your ankles.

To go against the tide is ir a contracorriente because Spanish individualists fight the current instead but conformists who go with the flow let themselves be carried along with it: ir con la corriente. 

Fine phrases like a rising tide of indignation retain marine connections with una oleada de indignación, literally a wave of indignation.  A tidal wave was always un maremoto which a spot of straight translation reveals as a seaquake although this is increasingly replaced by the internationally recognisable tsunami. 

Marejada sounds faintly seasick and produces its own quota of wooziness, since it is a heavy sea and the diminutive marejadilla indicates the same state of affairs, only less so. 

Returning to marear and its associations with having drunk more than is wise it is fitting that a Spanish hangover is una resaca, whose principal translations are undercurrent and undertow, plus the additional landlocked definitions of reaction and backlash.  Certainly no-one would question their aptness on those awful mornings when you celebrated too well the night before, when you’re all at sea, shipwrecked too, and the only words you’re capable of uttering are ¡vaya mareo!

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