#palabrotas

[welele]

Abriendo el correo por primera vez después de las Navidades pic.twitter.com/Upr9r0EaAd

— Natalia Álvarez (@Natalia_Who) January 7, 2025

Parece educada.

[spanishskulduggery]

Dumb question, but I struggle properly using Spanish curse words. Like “how in hell?” or like “what the f***?” because I don’t get the non-conjugated words and how they work... or like an example using words that aren’t palabrotas???

For these it’s generally not conjugated (depends on region). It’s almost always “question word + swear word”

For example - and the exact obscenity depends on the country - you have:

¿Qué demonios? = What the hell?¿Qué diablos? = What the hell? / What in God’s name? ¿Cómo diablos/demonios? = How the hell?¿Quién diablos/demonios? = Who the hell?

These are pretty mild. You might also see narices or rayos used for this. 

From there you get more vulgar

Qué / Cómo / Quién mierda… = What the fuck / How the fuck / Who the fuck

Qué / Cómo / Quién carajo… = What the fuck / How the fuck / Who the fuck

Qué / Cómo / Quién cojones… = What the fuck / How the fuck / Who the fuck

Qué / Cómo / Quién coño… = What the fuck / How the fuck / Who the fuck

Basically like that. They just start the sentence. I personally gravitate towards using mierda because that’s universal vulgarity

So you might see something like.. ¿Quién demonios eres tú? “Who the hell are you?”… but in Spain if you wanted to be vulgar you might see it as ¿Quién coño eres tú? “Who the fuck are you?”

Other expressions just kind of add curse words at the end to make it more vulgar.

Like… maldito/a sea is “damn it” which isn’t so bad in Spanish, it’s literally like “curse you”… but if you say ¡Maldito sea carajo! or in Spain something like ¡Maldito sea joder! it comes across more like “God fucking damn it!”

There are so many ways to make expressions more vulgar or less vulgar depending on the words. You can swap curse words, or you can add in what they call “minced oaths”… the one that you probably have heard already is like caramba or ay caramba which takes the place of carajo (which literally means “penis”)…

My own personal favorite is miércoles “Wednesday” in place of mierda “shit”

But all countries are a little different. Spain likes to use joder as a word to mean “fuck” all by itself, like an exclamation. Their word for “to fuck” is usually follar so it’s not the same.

Latin America tends to use joder as an actual verb “to fuck” or “to fuck with” so you might see no me jodas “don’t fuck with me” or “don’t mess with me” or… estar jodido/a “to be fucked (up)”… like estamos completamente jodidos “we’re so fucking screwed”

Mexico is very famous for chingar 

And in South America you see conchatumadre [sometimes conchasumadre depending on context because plural] which is kind of like “fuck you” or “fuck off” or just “fuck”

[fuckiing-disaster]

"No digas palabrotas que no te cuesta una puta mierda y quedas de puta madre

Mi padre

[spanishskulduggery]

awkward-writing replied:

Could you use a few of them in example sentences with their “stand in” (meaning what word they replace)?

Okay so most of the ways you see it would be just used as exclamations.

Like ay caray or ay caramba or just the words themselves take the place of carajo which is literally “dick” but means “fuck” as an exclamation in a lot of Latin America. You can also say caracoles which is literally “seashells” but is a stand-in for carajo too

Saying hijo de tu/su madre is like “son of a gun” instead of hijo de puta/perra “son of a bitch”

Saying jolín, or jolínes is used in place of joder which in Spain is used as “fuck”

Another common one for Spain is to say ostras “oysters” in place of hostia ...where hostia literally means “communion wafer / host” but is often used as an expletive like hostia puta “fucking hell” or salir cagando hostias “to run like a bat out of hell” but literally “to leave shitting communion wafers” ...basically anytime someone in Spain would want to say hostia as an expletive, they can say ostras instead

My own favorite is saying miércoles “Wednesday” which is in place of mierda “shit”... you’d know it from the song La camisa negra by Juanes. I like to say ay miércoles when I’m angry but that’s just me

The other not so swear words are things like rayos “dang”, chispas “dang” [chispas can also be used for “curses”, and I’ve seen it used for when someone says the same thing as you at the same time like “jinx”], although maldito/a sea is not so bad in Spanish. In English, la maldición or maldito/a sea are “damn” or “dammit” but it’s literally “curse” and “may it be cursed”

You also see qué demonios or qué dibalos which is used as “what the hell/heck”, and can be used with any other question word for “why the heck”, “how in the heck”, etc. 

I also once saw a woman try really hard not to say chingar “to fuck” which is very Mexican, and so she ended up saying China ...I don’t know if that’s a thing, or just a her thing.

If anyone else has any that they’d like to add, please go ahead!

[spanishskulduggery]

Additionally, in Latin America especially South America, you might hear la chuta used like “dang” or “shoot”. It’s most likely a nicer form of la chucha / chuxa or la chocha or some variation which literally means “cunt” but is used like “fuck” sometimes.

[spanishskulduggery]

What would be the best translation for "a la verga" and where is it used mostly?

To me it sounds very Mexican or Central American, but you normally see it as a very vulgar way of saying something like… vete a la verga which is “go to hell” but reads more vulgar than that somehow. I would personally translate it more like “eat shit and die” or “go to fucking hell” or “go fuck yourself” because vete al infierno “go to hell” is impolite but isn’t nearly as vulgar

[spanishskulduggery]

Trying to explain the very regional Caga Tió song to people... but if I told you there was a song about a log with lyrics that basically say and that you’d get beat with a stick if you don’t shit well, it would sound made up.

Fun Fact: The Spanish-speakers I told about this were more hung up on the fact that it’s tió and not tío. “Shit uncle” surprises no one.

[spanishskulduggery]

There’s this show on Netflix called “Altered Carbon” and I don’t know why but I always read it as Alterado Cabrón which is just me honestly