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Favourite spanish words

Filed under: General — Thomas @ 12:50

2007-10-17
12:50
  • vaivén
  • bocabierto
  • tiburón

Favourite Catalan words: ticis micis

UPDATE: I should open a dictionary before posting. It's actually boquabierto (even though I think the word for mouth is boca), and it's tiquis miquis, and apparently also exists in Spanish. At least I got the accents right on vaivén and tiburón. Thanks for the commenters correcting me. For Fons: vaivén is equivalent to "komen en gaan".

12 Comments »

  1. Explanation please.

    Comment by fons — 2007-10-17 @ 13:03

  2. ¡exactamente!

    Comment by Elij — 2007-10-17 @ 13:22

  3. Thomas, allow me do some corrections and explanations.

    I imagine that you mean “tiquismiquis” rather than “ticis micis”, and is not only catalan but also spanish. It means a person that is extremely fastidious about every little thing.

    Also it’s not “bocabierto” but “boquiabierto”. It literally “open-mouthed” but in general it’s used to mean “flabbergasted”.

    A “vaivén” is a swinging movement like that one of a boat.

    And a “tiburón” is a shark.

    Comment by Daniel Alonso — 2007-10-17 @ 13:30

  4. According to Spanish Academy (RAE), second word does not exists, but boquiabierto does ;)

    Besides, I don’t know catalan so maybe I am wrong, but I guess that catalan expression is equivalent to spanish “tiquismiquis”.

    One of my favourites spanish words is “enjundia”, and my favourites Cadiz words, “guachisnai” and “liquindoi”, wich still aren’t recognized by RAE.

    Comment by Danielgd — 2007-10-17 @ 13:57

  5. Favourite Italian phrase: o’cess (meaningly “very ugly”). Literally: “like a toilet”.

    Comment by fraggle — 2007-10-17 @ 14:23

  6. Maybe tiquis miquis is like the German Schicki-micki, which seems to roughly mean “posh”.

    Comment by Murray Cumming — 2007-10-17 @ 14:38

  7. I love the expressión “a cascoporro”, from the “La muchachada nui” show

    Comment by Diego — 2007-10-17 @ 14:57

  8. The update is wrong :)

    it’s “boquiabierto”:

    http://rae2.es/boquiabierto

    Comment by fer — 2007-10-17 @ 15:04

  9. tiquismiquis (actually a single word) comes from “macarronic” latin “tichi michi” that is a vulgar alteration of the original ancient latin form “tibi, mihi”: “for you, for me”

    Comment by fer — 2007-10-17 @ 15:06

  10. http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltGUIBusUsual?TIPO_HTML=2&LEMA=boquiabierto
    http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltGUIBusUsual?TIPO_HTML=2&LEMA=tiquismiquis

    In Firefox, make a bookmark with:

    Name: DRAE
    Location: http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltGUIBusUsual?TIPO_HTML=2&LEMA=%s
    keyword: drae

    Then type in the address bar: “drae tiquismiquis”

    Comment by 1052 — 2007-10-17 @ 15:15

  11. “Tiquis miquis” roughly means “to be picky” in a general sense.
    There is another related Catalan expression which is only used for being picky with food and
    I particularly enjoy as well: “llepa fils”. The literal translation is “thread licker”. That
    could probably be a good name for an algorithm or software that filters threads :)

    Comment by Albert Vilella — 2007-10-17 @ 15:37

  12. As fer said, the correct word is “boquiabierto” :)

    Comment by r0sk — 2007-10-17 @ 17:32

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