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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

This week we had a friend who’s father went into the hospital. After he had recovered they were going to darle de alta. Though I had heard the phrase before, it still confused me as to what exactly it meant. Today we were visiting a friend who was telling about her short stay in the [...]