the penny drops
I forgot that padre has more than one meaning until the Word of the Day reminded me.
padre, adjective: tremendous; terrible
Apart from referring to fathers, you may hear padre used in informal language to emphasize a noun.
Okay, this makes a snippet I heard on the bus the other day make a little more sense to me. The woman sitting in front of me was telling her companion about una pelea padre. At first I thought she was talking about a fight with her parents, but that didn't make sense.
Yes, I know, eavesdropping is bad. But conversations on public transportation are hard to keep private.
Labels: spanish
posted by jmc @ 9:37 AM
2 Comments:
I love word of the day, but they should probably be a bit more specific about geographical usage. I think this one's mostly Mexican and Central American. At least, you'd never use it in most of South America. They've had quite a few words like this.
Also, there's yet another usage in Mexico. When you say something is "padre" or "padrísimo", it's that it's really cool.
Geographical usage would be helpful :)
I don't think padre is a word I would use for cool -- the first meaning is too stuck in my head, and it feels wrong to use in other contexts.
Post a Comment
<< Home