The Spanish word moco, or “mucus,” can be applied affectionately to a child, much like speakers of English may refer to a youngster as a little booger. In some dialects, moco has a more pejorative sense, suggesting a child is more along the lines of a snot-nosed brat. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “”Moco” as An Affectionate Term for a Child”
Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, Martha. My name is Carly. I’m calling from Vista, California, North County, San Diego. Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha. Well, I’m calling about the word Moco. So when I was a kid, my dad used to refer to my sisters and myself as mocos, as in, all right, my little mocos, let’s get in the car. Here we go, heading out.
At the same time, he and I guess my mom also would also use the term mocos to refer to like boogers. Like if we had some snot on our face, they’d say like, oh, come here, let’s wipe some of those mocos. So obviously two very disparate uses of the word in my childhood.
But then also just recently I was out, I passed by a restaurant and they had like a takeout menu posted outside. And I saw that mocos was something that they were serving like as a dish. So it was coming up as food, too. And I thought, well, that’s odd. And then I just got to thinking, I wonder where that word came from and how it creeped into my family vocabulary as a kid.
Oh, wow. Okay. So I’m guessing that your household was Spanish-speaking? Yeah, we did have a bit of that. I don’t have any Latin ancestry, but my grandma, her father actually moved their family to Peru when she was a child because they were Hungarian. And they fled Hungary during World War II to escape persecution from the Nazis because they were Jewish.
So while she wasn’t actually Peruvian, she grew up in Peru and therefore grew up speaking Spanish and is completely fluent, obviously. And pass some of that on to my father as well. And when I was growing up in my household, we had a nanny who was very dear to me and my sisters, and she was from Mexico. So we actually even spoke a bit of Spanish with her when we were all kids. So yeah, we do have some Spanish speaking in my family.
All right. Yeah, so this is all coming together. It sounds like you’ve got all the important pieces here, and we just need to make a connection, one connection to make it work. Moco can mean mucus in Spanish, and moco can refer to a child. And the reason why is similar to the reason that you can call a child a little booger in English, and it can be kind of affectionate, right? Oh, you little booger.
Yeah, right, right. Right? -huh. But also it’s connected to how we might call somebody a snotty-nosed brat in English, because moco, depending on your dialect of Spanish, can either be a cute term for a kid or it can be kind of a derogatory term for a kid. It just depends where you are in the Spanish-speaking world.
So also the longer word for mucus, mocoso, can mean child or mucus as well. So it could be a cheeky or a bold child or an immature one or one that is poorly raised. So there’s lots of variants here. There’s even an even longer word, too, which is mocosuelo or mocosuela. All of these words all go back to the word mucus, and, of course, comes from Latin, the word for mucus.
Again, it’s kind of like the English little booger, you know, which is pretty affectionate. You might hear somebody say that in English, right? Or the English snot-nosed brat or snotty-nosed brat. Yeah, perfect. Now, that makes perfect sense, and it occurs to me now. I could have, you know, could have asked my dad. He probably could have shed some light on this too, but it was a fun excuse to talk to you guys.
So I’ll have to get back to him. I’ll have to ask him. I like that it’s passed now to the third generation. And maybe if you have a family of your own, you would use it. That’s lovely the way language works, isn’t it? It could just keep going. Moco just could keep going down the line.
But what about the food word? I think the food word might be a Hawaiian dish called loco moco, which is a dish with like, egg on top. I could be wrong. But it doesn’t mean crazy booger. No. Right. Sounds like they’re completely unrelated. I hope so. Yeah. It’s got ground beef on rice with a fried egg on top. That’s the Loco Moco that I know.
That makes perfect sense because I just saw the menu in passing, but there were some eggs there. So I bet you’re on the right track. Yeah. I suspect they just look alike. Yeah. It’s possible. Loco Moco sounds Spanish. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy mucus, right? There you go. It’s got a runny egg on top. That’s funny. That’s lovely. Oh, Carly, thank you so much for sharing with us.
Oh, thank you guys. It was such a pleasure to talk to you. I really appreciate your call. Okay. Be well. Thank you so much. All right. You guys too. Thank you both. You too. Bye. Bye. Yeah. Why don’t you join us? We’ll make a show together. 877-929-9673 or jump in on the fun and email words@waywordradio.org.
