On my way home from the cleaners today, I saw a taxi driver cut off a pedestrian. The walker was an older gentleman, and he yelled “Huevón!” as the car drove past.
I’m sure it was some sort of insult, but I don’t know exactly what. In fact, the whole scenario reminded me just how many ways the word “huevo” is used in Mexico and how I’m still clueless on about most of them.
The only instance I’m familiar with is vulgar. Huevos is considered another word for testicles. I’m almost sure there were some huevo jokes in my cooking class when we made rompope, because we used more than 30 eggs.
I’ve also heard people use the phrase “Qué hueva!” and just plain old “hueva.”
Any out there kind enough to translate?
Hi Leslie,
“huevón” can be translated as “flojo”, in a vulgar kinda way….”hueva” is simply “flojera”. It’s origin may be linked with the common male habit of scratching…down there…
On another note, I love your blog!
Thanks for the tips, Tere. I think I might be close to actually using “hueva”… but only among close friends who wouldn’t be ashamed of my vulgar mouth.
Lesley,
You might try Word Reference for translations like these. If it doesn’t have it, you can ask in the forums. You will get answers from all over the Spanish-speaking world.
Here is the main link and then two for your specific words. I like that they provide a lot of the regional differences. Here in Sonora, I hear huevón used for both lazy and butthead.
http://www.wordreference.com/
http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=huevon
http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=hueva
Saludos,
Miguel Ángel
I love that you said “butthead,” Miguel Ángel! Such a great word.
I just want to chime in here with, “ahuevo!” As you know my Spanish can be shit sometimes, but whenever I use that word I mean something like “hell/fuck yeah!” Not sure how that would be related to huevo, but I’m guessing maybe in the balls-out or ballsy kind of way… I also say it more calmly in situations that merit less enthusiasm, maybe as I would say “word” or “right on” in English.
Like I said, I could be wrong about this and it would be months before any of my Mexican friends might eventually correct me, but it feels right judging from the context I’ve heard it in.
Mary,
There is a great discussion of the word “ahuevo” on WordReference. Very funny. Here is the link:
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=20000
At least in up here in the great Sonoran desert (42 degrees C today), for “Huevón”, if one says it about an acquaintance and grabs one’s crotch, it means lazy. If he is cursing someone, it means “butthead” (or worse) and requires the obligatory upthrusted fist and grab with the opposite hand. As always, body movements are as important as the actual words.
Español is so much fun than English, no?
I actually heard you (Mary Claire) use it on Twitter once, which was partially why I wrote this post. (Me: “What the heck does ‘ahuevo’ mean? Why does Mary Claire know all the cool slang and I don’t? Oh yeah… she has more Mexican friends.”)
Love the idea of having a comparable “hell yeah” in Spanish. I’ve kind of, sort of, hesitantly been using “órale” for that. Ahuevo seems like it would have more emphasis. I’m going to try to use it next time we see each other.
Thanks Miguel Ángel. I love Word Reference, and I was too lazy (huevona?) to look this time around. Think I’ll have to add them as a link on my sidebar to remind myself. Hope you’re keeping cool in the desert!
Haha well I have no idea what it means but possibly might give it a try next time someone cuts in front of me…! :p
When my parents moved to Mexico City in 1964, my mother asked the waiter at the Maria Isabel Sheraton, “tienes huevos”? He turned beet red, but given my mom’s seemingly respectable appearance and logical question at breakfast time, he knew what she really meant to ask was, “hay huevos”.
Stephanie,
A great story.
Our family has a similar one. After a year in San Miguel de Allende our youngest brother returned to Southern California. At a Mexican restaurant we let him order breakfast and he asked the pretty young mesera just up from México, “Tiene Ud. huevos Benedictinos?” You know what happened next. The poor thing was mortified.
When we picked everyone off the floor, we christened him “Don Benedictino”, a name he carries to this day.
Oh no! How funny that you remember the moment so clearly. I’m sure I could’ve made the same mistake as your mom, even though I’ve been living here for 2 1/2 years. I’ve definitely asked “Dónde están los huevos?” at the supermarket and gotten a strange look. Didn’t realize the market folks call them “blanquillos.”
My wife and I are moving to DF in less than two weeks – thank you for helping us to learn as much of the culture as we can before we arrive.
Another blog that has helped me brush up on vernacular Spanish has been Effective Swearing in DF. The author touched on your question in a past post: http://swearindf.blogspot.com/2009/08/huevon-vs-huevudo.html
Thanks Bret. I love Effective Swearing in DF. Haven’t heard “huevudo” used much, but I’ll keep an eye out. Also — bienvenidos a México!
I used to enjoy the Chilango magazine, and one of its best articles was always a thesaurus of all of the uses of some word from vernacular Spanish. Huevo and madre were exceptional hits!
‘Huevón’ was the first word I learned here for ‘lazy’. I once said it to an older, very proper traveling companion on a plane ride. She later asked me where I had learned to speak Spanish…the implied answer, of course, was “in the gutter”. Moral of the story? Speakers of a second language (even if they ARE Mexican /American) need to understand the nuance of a slang word before they use it. Ever hear a Chinese person say “dude”? Sounds bad, believe me…
Nick: This story made me laugh. But I actually like it when speakers of other languages use American slang. How else do you test something out and see if it works? I don’t think “dude” works in a professional context (although I used it yesterday when I was interviewing a guide for Eat Mexico… whoops), but among friends it’s fine, even if it’s not the person’s native language. I’m more with Mary Claire on this one — interpreting the nuance on your own, and then using where appropriate.
I would like to see ‘dude’ eliminated from the English language, and ‘wey’ from the Spanish. But I’ll keep saying and being ‘huevón’…
Chilango here, I’m happy to share what I can:
Note that “a huevo” is two words, not one. It has different meanings depending on context and intonation (similar to the two main meanings of “pocamadre” for example). Said excitedly, ¡a huevo! means roughly “hell yeah!”, it can also be used in a more neutral way to say “of course”: – ¿vas a ver el partido? ‘A huevo’. Finally, it can also be a way emphasize that something is going to/has to/should happen: “A huevo que vamos a ganar” or “Tienes que ir, a huevo”. That last one might be a bit confusing :/ there’s nothing I can think of in English that really translates.
As Leslie said ‘hueva’ is an “improper” way of saying ‘flojera’, and as such might be thought as being a bit. stronger. ‘Huevon’ or ‘huevona’ is someone who is lazy, same as ‘flojo’ and ‘floja’.
For the sake of completeness. . . erm. . . ‘huevos’ is a sort of dismissive insult difficult to translate. It roughly means “screw you” mixed with a bit of “shut up” or “talk to the hand”. It has an accompanying hand gesture but you’re probably better off asking a local for that if you want to know!
There’s also a phrase, “¿te pesan, verdad?”, again with an accompanying (and hilarious!) hand gesture. Mainly directed at huevones it implies that the guy’s . . .ahem. . .gonads are so heavy they’re the reason he’s being so inactive and so is another way of saying to someone they’re being lazy. My guess is that this thought process is what’s lead to huevo = laziness in slang.
Man, trying to explain Mexican slang always reminds me how friggin’ complicated and arbitrary it is. I feel kinda bad for someone trying to learn it, this is second nature to me and most chilangos but for people who didn’t grow up with that. . . yeah, it’s a bit much.
By the way, ehm, for anyone wondering about “pocamadre”: it literally means “few/little mother”, ie implying one has had little mothering, or moral instructions from one’s mother. So one meaning of it is to deplore something: “que pocamadre” means, when directed at a person, that he has no shame, no honour, that he/she acted cruelly or dishonestly. On the other hand though if you say ¡Qué pocamadre!” excitedly it means “It is awesome!”. Don’t ask me why : (
So yeah, complicated and arbitrary. Best of luck!
Huevón means lazy. I don’t think it’s vulgar in the sense that you should not say it but it’s not exactly formal. For example, I wouldn’t use it if I were giving a speech. It is very common and as for hueva it is used to say that you are feeling lazy (tengo hueva, tiene hueva, que hueva, etc).
Now for ahuevo. To be honest, I have never really understood this one. I never use it because my mom considers it very vulgar. It means something like ‘hell yeah’ or can also mean that you HAVE to do something but don’t necessarily want to do it like if I said, ‘a huevo tengo que limpiar’. The word doesn’t sound offensive but apparently it is. Oh, who knows!
At my house as kids we always used “a huevo” to mean forcibly or without a choice, as in “a huevo tienes que tender tu cama” or “se descompuso el coche y a huevo tiene que hablarle al mecánico.” When I got home from the office I consulted my newly purchased “Diccionario de mexicanismos ” from the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua (highly recommended, btw). It says “Forzozamente”. As a second definition it says “se usa para expresar afirmación”. It also has “de a huevo,” meaning “sin ninguna opción”. I hope that helps.
As relates to huevos and huevones, I love how laziness is gendered as a male thing. Huevos may have some benefit for the propagation of the species, but they sure seem to get in the way of work. My grandmother used to say of a hardworking woman, “Los tiene colgados en la palma,” i.e., she had taken her laziness-inducing huevos and hung them high on a palm tree so that she wouldn’t have access to them and be tempted to slack off.
I hope that helps. Love the blog!
Citrus: Thanks for your lovely comment. I haven’t heard “colgados en la palma” before, but I’m now a fan. (I will only use it among people I know well.) I’ll have to see if Ghandi or Porrua has the mexicanismos book. Appreciate the tip!
jaja. I only learned that it was a vulgar way of saying lazy after I shared a recipe for “salsa huevona” (salsa fresca the way my brother learned to make it in Puebla) with one of my aunties… ooops!
This really made me laugh. I studied abroad in Chile where huevon and it’s deriviatives is practically half the slang. You can conjucate it and everything! My host-sister had a dirty mouth and I enjoyed listening to her 1001 ways to use huevon.
Just a caution though, it seems like huevon has a lighter meaning in Mexico than in other countries. Although it’s common in Chile, it’s not particularly nice and one of my Colombian friends was completely indignant when I called him “huevon” in jest one day.
Here is an ahttp://juantornoe.blogs.com/hispanictrending/2004/06/huevon_and_guey.htmlrticle for you:
I do so enjoy your posts…
Hueva or güeva I use in a variety of ways (gueyes!); Qué güeva! or Ella es de güeva! meaning that it is bothersome or tiresome or that a person is a pain. “Echar la güeva” or “tirar la güeva” means to relax or take a nap and on a hot Saturday afternoon, that is a good thing! Hope you are having a good vacation in Gringolandia.
Thanks for the tips, Maria! Think I’m going to use “echar la hueva” the next time it’s Sunday and I don’t feel like doing anything. Actually, I’m constantly a busy bee, so I think I need to allow myself to echar la hueva more often.