In Spanish, mordida literally means “a bite,” but it’s a kind of bribe. It predates the English phrase “put the bite on someone” by more than a hundred years. One proposed etymology for the Spanish term is that divers rescuing treasure from wrecked Spanish galleons were allowed, on their final dive, to keep as many coins as they could bring up crammed into their mouths. Another story goes that the underlings of a Spanish nobleman collected a special tax to help pay for his extensive dental work, then simply continued the practice after the work was paid for. Both of these colorful stories are probably too colorful to be believed. “Mordida!” is also a popular cry at birthday celebration in parts of Latin America, where the birthday boy or girl is encouraged by cheering guests to plunge face first into a cake. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Mordida!”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Bob Beacons from Oceanside, California.
Hi, Bob. How are you doing?
Hey, Bob.
Doing great. Oh, both of you. Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.
You get two for one, Bob.
What’s up?
I’m so lucky.
What can we help with?
Well, I was selling real estate down in Mexico, down in Baja,
And I knew about the police.
They’re occasionally taking what’s called a mordida,
Which is a bribe if you’re about to get a ticket.
And I was pumping gas one day, and there was a dog next to the pump, and I got that look in my eye like I wanted to pet it.
And the guy on the other side of the pump said, Peligro Mordida Estepero or something like that.
And I thought, what the heck does a dog want a bride for?
And then he made a motion with his hands like biting, and I went, oh, Mordida means to bite.
So I remembered store owner protection money in New Jersey being called putting the bite on him.
So I’m wondering, did the bite from New Jersey and Mordida, meaning the bite in Mexico,
Did they happen concurrently or separately?
How did that roll out?
Oh, what an interesting question.
It is indeed.
Yeah, put the bite on in English and then the Spanish word Mordida, which means bite.
M-O-R-D-I-D-A.
Yes, yes.
Let’s dispatch the English one first because it’s pretty simple.
Just putting the bite on somebody, as we said, is to take something forcefully that’s not yours.
And I haven’t seen that any earlier than the early 20th century, and it’s often associated with gambling.
So I don’t know if there’s a gambling connection or not, but I haven’t seen it any earlier than the 1930s.
What’s interesting about the term Mordida in Spanish is that the Royal Academy in Spain hasn’t been able to come up with a firm etymology of Mordida.
But if you look at some of the Spanish language sites, there are a couple of funny stories that purport to explain its origin.
Would you like to hear them?
Sure.
It’s funny because they both go back to the 17th century.
One of them is that there was a representative of the Spanish king in what is now Mexico,
And he had very bad oral hygiene and needed new teeth.
And so his underlings, sort of trying to impress him,
Went around and collected bribes from people to pay for the guy’s dental work.
And then that worked out so well that they continued to take bribes in the future.
But it was for la mordida, for the guy’s bite.
Which is such a colorful story that I’m sure Grant is having the same kind of…
Yeah, colorful stories with language origins are almost always fake.
Yes, yes.
And there’s one more…
Too good to be true.
Yeah, one more that’s floating around, actually, literally, which is that in the 17th century,
When some of these Spanish galleons would crash close to shore and sink,
They would hire people to go and get the stuff from the ship.
And, you know, people who would dive maybe 20 or 30 feet in the water.
And supposedly on their last trip down, they could take whatever coins were there and fill as many as possible into their mouths and come back to the surface.
And they were allowed to keep that little Mordida.
Also, a silly story, colorful.
I’ve seen illustrations of it online.
How do you hold your breath and put coins in your mouth?
That was my question.
Maybe this is one of those look up gullible in the dictionary kinds of things.
I don’t know.
But what interests me is that we only see it in English, put the bite on, back to the 30s or so.
But there are these stories, supposedly, that go back to the 17th century.
But there are a lot of other words for bribing and bribes in American English.
So it’s not the only one.
They have to do with biting?
Well, they don’t.
But they have to do with something with eating to sweeten something, to bribe somebody or sweeten someone.
Or a smear or a schmear in New York City.
But that’s your little extra on top.
Little extra.
Right?
We do, by the way, Bob, we do say to get a taste means to get your part of something.
That is still even used today.
Like if there’s a big business deal going down and I want a little kickback or a little bribe to make it happen,
I could call it getting my taste or getting a taste, and that’s the bribe.
Nice.
So, Bob, thanks for a great question.
Oh, my pleasure. Take care. Bye-bye.
