Spanish Word of the Day

Quote: Wizard

Fecha: 13-11-12
Palabra: Terquear

Today's SWD means to become stubborn/obstinate. A related word, and probably more frequently seen, is terco, which means stubborn.

Ejemplo time.

El Capitán se vuelve terco cuando se está enojado. = The Skipper becomes stubborn when he gets mad.

I'm confused. Is terco both another word with a similar meaning and one of the conjugations of terquear?

Quote: rdw4potus

El Capitán se vuelve terco cuando se está enojado. = The Skipper becomes stubborn when he gets mad.

I'm confused. Is terco both another word with a similar meaning and one of the conjugations of terquear?

terco is an adjective that means "stubborn"
terquear is a verb that means "mostrarse terco" or to appear stubborn.

Nareed is saying that "terquear" is more of a "dictionary word" . The wizard used the phrase "se vuelve terco" or "he is becoming stubborn" where the verb that you are conjugating is volverse.

"volver" means "to turn", but in it's reflexive version "volverse" it is better translated as "to become"

Quote: Pacomartin

Quote: rdw4potus

El Capitán se vuelve terco cuando se está enojado. = The Skipper becomes stubborn when he gets mad.

I'm confused. Is terco both another word with a similar meaning and one of the conjugations of terquear?

terco is an adjective that means "stubborn"
terquear is a verb that means "mostrarse terco" or to appear stubborn.

Nareed is saying that "terquear" is more of a "dictionary word" . The wizard used the phrase "se vuelve terco" or "he is becoming stubborn" where the verb that you are conjugating is volverse.

"volver" means "to turn", but in it's reflexive version "volverse" it is better translated as "to become"

That's kind of what I thought, and in that case it looks to me like the example does not actually use the word of the day.

Quote: rdw4potus

That's kind of what I thought, and in that case it looks to me like the example does not actually use the word of the day.

Well, there is a related group of words. You could have the noun "agua" and the verb "aguar". The noun means "water" and the verb means "to water".

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The wizard used the phrase "se vuelve terco" or "he is becoming stubborn" where the verb that you are conjugating is volverse.
Nareed used the phrase "se pone terco" or "he is becoming stubborn" where the verb that you are conjugating is ponerse.

The pharse "ponerse + adjective" expresses a change of an emotional or physical nature, and that "volverse + adjective" expresses an involuntary or sudden change.
The difference is hard for gringos, like the difference between "por" and "para". Gringos always use "por" because it sounds like "for".

We might say that "stubborn" is both an emotion, but it also is a sudden change. But Nareed is the native speaker, so she is correct.

Some speakers associate volverse with very intense changes. You would say "se volví loco" if the Skipper became insane.

You could also say "me hacía gordo" (I became fat) if the change is more evolutionary.

Anyway, I am sure that I would get it wrong much of the time as well. An article that goes into more detail is here.

Quote: rdw4potus

That's kind of what I thought, and in that case it looks to me like the example does not actually use the word of the day.

First, welcome to the SWD.

You could argue that. Usually I will use a verb when the SWD is a verb. However, in Spanish you often encounter sets of nouns, verbs, and adjecctives that all come from the base word. So a nice thing about learning the langauge is that you often get two or three words for the cost of memorizing just one. However, that doesn't excuse me for using an adjective when the actual SWD was a verb. How many pushups do I owe for that?

Quote: rdw4potus

That's kind of what I thought, and in that case it looks to me like the example does not actually use the word of the day.

Normally a group of semantically related words like 'run','ran','runs','running' is referred to as a lexeme and is cited in a dictionary by the "head word" or "lemma". In English we generally cite the "bare infinitive" which is normally the same as present tense (except 3rd person singular). But sometimes the lexeme includes idiomatic forms like runny which are used in place of the normal past participle running. The past participle can be used as an adjective as in "the police are chasing the running man", but the nonstandard formulation is idiomatically used, "I have a runny nose.

So in English when the cites a headword run you are referring to the entire lexeme which includes transitive verb meanings, intransitive verb meanings, nouns, adjectives, participles, and phrasal verbs.

In Spanish the normal headword to cover a lexeme is the "infinitive" or the -ar, -er, -ir version of a verb. For example, the full infinitive in English "to fry" is freír. The past participle in English is "fried" which is the same as the simple past verb. "He fried and egg" (past tense verb), or "He liked fried eggs" (adjective). In Spanish the normal past participle is freído bit it is much more common to use the irregular form frito as an adjective.

Quote: Double participles from RAE frequently asked questions

Dobles participios: imprimido/impreso, freído/frito, proveído/provisto

Los únicos verbos que en la lengua actual presentan dos participios, uno regular y otro irregular, son imprimir (imprimido/impreso), freír (freído/frito) y proveer (proveído/provisto), con sus respectivos derivados. Los dos participios pueden utilizarse indistintamente en la formación de los tiempos compuestos y de la pasiva perifrástica, aunque la preferencia por una u otra forma varíe en cada caso (véase el Diccionario panhispánico de dudas, s/v imprimir, freír, proveer):

Hemos imprimido veinte ejemplares / Habían impreso las copias en papel fotográfico.
Nos hemos proveído de todo lo necesario / Se había provisto de víveres abundantes.
Las empanadillas han de ser freídas dos horas antes / Nunca había frito un huevo.

No debe asimilarse el caso de estos participios verbales irregulares con el del nutrido grupo de adjetivos procedentes de participios latinos, como abstracto (del latín abstractus, participio de abstrahere), atento (del lat. attentus, part. de attendere), confuso (del lat. confusus, part. de confundere), correcto (del lat. correctus, part. de corrigere), contracto (del lat. contractus, part. de contrahere), tinto (del lat. tinctus, part. de tingere), etc. Algunas de estas formas pueden haber funcionado como participios verbales en épocas pasadas del idioma, pero hoy funcionan solamente como adjetivos y, por lo tanto, no se usan en la formación de los tiempos compuestos ni de la voz pasiva de los verbos correspondientes (no se dice *Han contracto matrimonio o *Son correctos por el profesor, sino Han contraído matrimonio o Son corregidos por el profesor). Por lo tanto, la consideración de estos verbos como «verbos con doble participio» carece de justificación gramatical.
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For some lexemes in English, the highly irregular verb (clothe,clad,clothed) is almost never used. The verb is fairly archaic and sounds good in hundred year old bible translations like "when I was ill-clad, you clothed me; when I was sick, you visited me..". However, the past participle used as an adjective clothed is much more common. Also the noun, "cloth" is very common.


The Wizard did not make a mistake. He followed the standard convention of citing the infinitive version of the verb terquear whose past participle would standardly be conjugated terquído. Slightly different that "frito" example above, the standard conjugation is never used for this verb, but the nonstandard conjugation for the past particple. Similar to the verb "clothe" in English, the adjective terco (masculine) or terca (feminine) is used more frequently.

Fecha: 14-11-12
Palabra: Litera

After all the fuss yesterday, let's go with a nice easy noun today, which means bunk bed.

The question for the advanced readers is whether the "liter" comes fromt he same root as that meaning "to the letter" in words such as literal and literally. That root is found in both English and Spanish.

Ejemplo time.

Ginger duerme en la litera superior, y Maryann en la litera inferior. = Ginger sleeps in the upper bunk, and Maryann in the lower bunk.

15-11-12
Palabra: Fiambre

Today's SWD means "cold cut," or cold pieces of meat, at least according to SpanishDict.com. Sorry, Nareed, I know you hate that site. Where I encounted the word it was a transation from "Everything was damp and chill in the wagon, but they had to stay in it and eat cold bits of food." This was translated into "Todo estaba húmedo, frío y desagreadable el la carreta, pero tuvieron que quedarse allí y comer fiabres."

Trivia time: Can anbody say (without searching!) what book this comes from?

I'm going to skip the usual ejemplo, since I already quoted one.

Quote: Wizard

LiteraThe question for the advanced readers is whether the "liter" comes from the same root as that meaning "to the letter" in words such as literal and literally. That root is found in both English and Spanish.

The two roots are unrelated despite the similarity in spelling. Litera means "letter" in Romanian & Polish, and "typeface" in Latvian.

Litera is a cognate of English verb litter because of the idea of an animal's bed being made from straw or bits of paper. The action of "littering" the house was by spreading bits of bedding material around.

The word spelling is also similar to "liter" or 2.2 pounds, which is another unrelated word that comes from Greek "litra" or pound.


Judging from the images, the word "Fiambre" (from frío ) is not just "cold cuts of meat", but almost any cold dish. There are even "fiambre vegetables".

The word is also a euphemism for "corpse".



I don't recognize the quote, so I will guess "Little House on the Prarie".

Quote: Pacomartin

I don't recognize the quote, so I will guess "Little House on the Prarie".

Ding ding ding! Give that man a prize! I didn't expect anybody to recognize it exactly, but that "Little House on the Prarie" was a good educated guess. I'm in the process of going through the whole series -- in Spanish.