Menudo is tiny, small or insignificant.
A menudo means often or frequent.
Por menudo means to be exact or specific, to pay attention to the details.

Of course we know that cámara (fotográfica) means camera. Both words come from a Latin root which means chamber. In Spanish the word can be used for room, loft, house or even a legislative body.
But most interesting to me is that it is also the word used for an inner tube on a bicycle tire.

Cada tercer día is an expression that means every other day. Literally translated it means every third day which would be every other day.

Huelga is the noun for the word strike, as in a hunger strike or a strike from work. There is not much to say about the noun other than to know its definition. It is used the same way we would use the word strike in English.
What is interesting though is the verb holgar. It […]

Por debajo del agua is an idiomatic expression. Literally translated it is under the water. But it is an expression that means under the table. As in something done illegally, underhanded or in secret.
Note: This originally was posted with the expression as bajo el agua. Thanks to a commenter, this has been corrected.

I think this word may be uniquely Mexican. Metiche is used for someone who is nosy or a busy body. Someone who cannot keep their nose out of other people’s business is a metiche.
When I lived in Perú some years back, I remember we used the word sapo for this purpose. The idea is that […]

Talking with a friend last night he used the word aguacero to refer to a rain storm. It was the first time I remember hearing it. It means a sudden downpour of rain. Or it can mean a flash flood.

Oír and escuchar deal with the sense of hearing. And just like ver and mirar they are different aspects of the same thing.
Oír, according to my dictionary, is to perceive sounds with your ear, to hear.
Escuchar is to apply your ear to hear, to listen.
My dictionary also cautions not to confuse oír with escuchar and […]

I never knew there was a question about the spelling of the ninth month until this weekend. I saw it spelled “setiembre.” The Real Academia de España accepts this spelling as well as the more common “septiembre” spelling.
The spelling without the p is apparently used in some parts of Latin America as well as regions […]

This would be equivalent to a joker or wild card in English. It is not only used in games though. Sometimes a word can be a comodín. I recently heard a Spanish podcaster who used comodín when talking about a word that is used to mean whatever you want it to mean.
It is also the […]