Mamitas: colloquial way of talking about the excessive attachment and favouritism a child has for their mother. Papitis is also used when referring to a dad, and there’s been some controversy as it hasn’t been included in the dictionary.
Example:
Raúl has a serious case of mastitis. He doesn’t want to be detached from his mother.
Raúl has a serious case of ‘mumitis’. He doesn’t want to leave his mother’s side.
Micromachismo: A misogynistic microaggression. According to Oxfam, some examples of this are choosing pink for girls and blue for boys, for a man to always pay the bill, saying that women and men can’t be friends and not using inclusive language.
Example:
Irene Montero wants to put an end to micromachismo at work.
Irene Montero wants to get rid of misogynistic microaggressions in the workplace.
Dot com: The same as spelling out ‘dotcom’ in English. Although anglicisms are becoming more prevalent in Spanish tech talk, there are still words Spaniards prefer to translate, such as seeker for a search engine.
Example:
The dot-com bubble wreaked havoc on the stock market.
The dot-com bubble caused havoc in the stock market.
Conspiranoia: A noun which is a combination of the Spanish words for conspiracy and paranoia, referring to the tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. The adjective is conspiracy theorist.
Example:
He is quite conspiratorial, he believes that the twin towers were collapsed by the CIA.
He’s quite the conspiracy theorist, he thinks the Twin Towers were blown up by the CIA.
Garciamarquiano: Characteristic or reminiscent of the ‘magic realism’ writings of Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, similar to how Kafkaesque or Orwellian are used. Cortazarianused to denote similarity with the work of Julio Cortázar, has also been added.
Example:
It is a Garciamarcan situation in which reality is not distinguished from fiction.
It’s a ‘Garciamarquesque’ situation where truth can’t be told apart from fiction.
Rular: A colloquial verb used to say that something is working or moving.
Example:
This doesn’t work, are you sure it’s not broken?
This isn’t working, are you sure it isn’t broken?
Porter: A slang verb to say vomit, similar to saying puke or barf in English. There’s also the expression kick the pot. Pota is vomit as a noun.
Example:
Don’t even think about throwing the pota in my car!
Don’t you dare puke in my car!
portunol: A combination of Portuguese and Spanish, similar to how Spanglish is used to refer to a mix of English and Spanish.
Example:
The truth is that I speak broken Portuguese, rather I speak Portuñol.
In all honesty I fumble through Portuguese, if anything I speak ‘Portuñol’.
golf session: ‘Naughty’ performance or screening at a theatre, cinema, nightclub or otherwise held after 1am and usually of an adult nature.
Example:
You can expect all kinds of crazy things during the slutty session in Room X.
You can expect all kinds of madness during the naughty hour at the Sala X.
Only: A colloquial way of saying hunger. It could be derived from the expression Kill the bugwhich means to take the edge off your hunger (although its literal translation is ‘to kill the worm’).
Example:
What a taste I have! I’m eating a wild boar.
I’m so hungry! I could eat a wildbore.
Fortysomething: A forty-something person, forty-something to refer to a woman. How this wasn’t already in the Spanish dictionary we don’t know, as it’s common to also say twenties (twenty-something), thirtysomething (thirty-something), fifties (fifty-something), sixties (sixty-something) and so on.
Example:
She is in her forties with three children, but that has not prevented her from being the head of a company.
She’s a forty-something woman with three kids but that hasn’t prevented her becoming a company boss.