It’s been too long since I’ve done one of these palabritas posts. But I’m still chugging my way through my Interactivo del vocabulario, still averaging around 10 words per day (I’m well over 1000 words by now; will post another progress update soon). Today, some adjetivos.
forrado/a — lined (see el forro — lining — and forrar — to line). Pero si alguien está forrado, it means they are well-heeled or well-off. Just be careful not to confuse this with estar follado… (-; Ahem, no translation offered here.
chillón/chillona — loud, gaudy. Después sus primeras vacaciones en Hawai, siempre llevaba camisas bastantes chillonas. — Ever since his first his vacation in Hawaii, he always wore loud shirts. This word looks deceptively like “chillin’” (a good memorization cue and nice tie-in to surf culture, dude!). Except that rather than a cool connotation, it has a negative one, I think. I suppose this is where opinions on what’s gaudy (or rather, Gaudí) are subjective…some people love bright colours and patterns, others find them…well, gaudy. As far as I know, Gaudí wasn’t involved in Hawaiian shirt design. Or surf culture.
amarillo/a — yellow. Simple enough — if only armadillos were yellow we’d have a great, if mildly dyslexic, memory cue! If you talk about la prensa amarilla, you’re talking about the tabloid press (I guess kind of like the “pulp press” in English, as opposed those more reputable “large-format” papers with their highfalutin don’t-rub-off-on-your-fingers ink). The expression almost sounds like — but is not — our “yellow pages” telephone directory. Nope, in fact that’s a worldwide phenomenon; they also have las páginas amarillas in Spain!
Colour note: Some colour adjectives — like amarillo, blanco and morado — swap the “o” for an “a” when applied to a feminine noun (as is normal with most “o”-ending adjectives). La pelota amarilla is the yellow ball. But it’s funny that others — “a”-ending ones like naranja, malva and rosa — do not switch endings to “o” in masculine. Instead, they always end with “a”. Also, when used as a noun (referring to the colour), they’re masculine: el rosa, el naranja. I suppose it’s as if they were an adjective and the implied noun was “el color”. Caution, though — some of these words also have feminine meanings: la rosa is a rose (the flower), and la naranja is an orange (the fruit). [If that weren't enough, wait until you find out that el naranjo is the orange...tree! But I'm not going to tell you that; I wouldn't want to confuse you more.]
fucsia — fuchsia (yes, another “a”-ending adjective). I think we pronounce this word incorrectly in English. I’d guess that the Spanish pronunciation is closer to the way it should sound. We pronounce it “fyoo-sha” in English, but since this flower (and hence colour) was named after a German botanist named “Fuchs”, it probably should have a hard “c” sound — as it does in Spanish.
I lied about all today’s words being adjectives — here’s a noun to round out this lengthy “lesson”:
el puño — cuff (on a shirt). But also fist (on an arm). Hmm, I wonder if this is where our wacky word “fisticuffs” (meaning fist-fighting) comes from? (-;