Spanish Idiom for Being Overwhelmed

Maria Grant from Plano, Texas sent us a lovely Spanish word. It’s desahogar.

So that’s D-E-S-A-H-O-G-A-R?

Yes, exactly. And it has lots of meanings. It can mean to vent to somebody or to let your emotions out by crying or to confide in somebody, just telling them what is making you sad at the moment.

And the wonderful thing about desahogar is that it comes from the verb ahogar, which means to drown. And so desahogar literally means to undrown. Isn’t that gorgeous?

Oh, yeah. So there’s like connotations of rescue and resuscitation and the aid of another person.

Yeah, or just reversing the process.

You know, there’s also an expression in Spanish, ahogarse en un vaso de agua, which means to drown in a glass of water, literally, but it means to get overwhelmed by a problem that’s really not all that much.

Mountain out of mohill.

Yeah, exactly.

That’s a lovely word.

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