In British English, the exercise known as push-ups in the United States goes by the name press-ups. The Spanish term is lagartijas, a lagartija being a small lizard that sometimes moves in a similar way. The English word alligator comes from the related Spanish term el lagarto, or “the lizard.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Push Ups, Press Ups, and Lagartijas”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
If you’re in the United States, your fitness routine may include push-ups, where you get on the floor and you’ve got your palms flat on the floor and you push yourself up, right? In Britain, it goes by a different name. They’re press-ups.
Oh, I see. Same idea, right? But my new favorite word is the Spanish term for push-ups. It’s lagartija, which means little lizard. Isn’t that cute?
Oh, right. So you’re like a lizard. They do the push-ups, right? Yeah. Is this the way that they cool their body or something?
Well, I think they’re not really sure why lizards do that. It may be some kind of mating behavior or just sort of marking your territory.
Yeah. But you’ve seen little lizards do this, right?
Yeah, absolutely. They’re doing little push-ups. So those are lagartijas. And there’s something else really cool about that, which is that that means little bitty lizard in Spanish. But the original form, lagarto, in Spanish means lizard. And that also is part of a familiar English word, the name for those large animals in Florida that look like giant lizards.
El lagarto.
Lounge lizards?
I think of guys with slick back hair and plugs.
No, el lagarto de Indies became alligator of the Indies. How cool is that?
I did not know that. Very interesting.
How do you spell the word for push-ups in Spanish?
In Spanish, it’s L-A-G-A-R-T-I-J-A, lagartija.
Lagartija.
Very good. How cool is that, right?
That’s very cool. You know, we’ve got a lot of bilingual or multilingual listeners, and you listeners, you know these things about these special connections to English and etymology, and you’ve got some words that you treasure from the other language.
We want to hear it. Tell us those treasured words from other languages, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.
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