A listener in Virginia Beach, Virginia, reports that her three-year-old would ask for horrible eggs rather than hard boiled eggs, and the family has used that term ever since. A listener in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, says her Cuban-born mother uses the expression friendo un huevo or “frying an egg” to indicate the act of making a sucking sound with one’s teeth to express disapproval or disagreement. The Spanish expression is also rendered as freír alguien huevos. In English-speaking parts of the Caribbean, this same thing is sometimes referred to as a chup in the English-speaking Caribbean. This is part of a complete episode.
Why do some Spanish speakers use adaptations of certain English terms when there’s already a perfectly good word for the same thing in Spanish? Sometimes the result is called “Spanglish.” For example, Spanish cuentas means “bills,”...
We’ve previously discussed when pigs fly and other idioms expressing profound skepticism that something will occur. That prompted an email from Guillermo in Tucson, Arizona, who shared a Spanish phrase that conveys a similar idea: cuando la...
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