REVEALED: The best new Spanish words added to the dictionary in 2022
Spain’s Royal Language Academy has officially added 3,000 words to the Spanish dictionary over the course of 2022. Here are 11 of the best you need to learn, with explanations and examples.
Mamitis: colloquial way of talking about the excessive attachment and favouritism a child has for their mother. Papitis is also used when referring to a dad, and there’s been some controversy as it hasn’t been included in the dictionary.
Example:
Raúl tiene un serio caso de mamitis. No se quiere despegar de su madre.
Raúl has a serious case of ‘mumitis’. He doesn’t want to leave his mother’s side.
Micromachismo: A misogynistic microaggression. According to Oxfam, some examples of this are choosing pink for girls and blue for boys, for a man to always pay the bill, saying that women and men can't be friends and not using inclusive language.
Example:
Irene Montero quiere acabar con los micromachismos en el trabajo.
Irene Montero wants to get rid of misogynistic microaggressions in the workplace.
Puntocom: The same as spelling out ‘dotcom’ in English. Although anglicisms are becoming more prevalent in Spanish tech talk, there are still words Spaniards prefer to translate, such as buscador for a search engine.
Example:
La búrbuja puntocom causó estragos en la bolsa.
The dot-com bubble caused havoc in the stock market.
Conspiranoia: A noun which is a combination of the Spanish words for conspiracy and paranoia, referring to the tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. The adjective is conspiranoico/a.
Example:
Es bastante conspiranoico, cree que las torres gemelas las derrumbó la CIA.
He’s quite the conspiracy theorist, he thinks the Twin Towers were blown up by the CIA.
Garciamarquiano: Characteristic or reminiscent of the ‘magic realism’ writings of Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, similar to how Kafkaesque or Orwellian are used. Cortazariano, used to denote similarity with the work of Julio Cortázar, has also been added.
Example:
Es una situación garciamarquiana en la que no se distingue la realidad de la ficción.
It’s a ‘Garciamarquesque’ situation where truth can’t be told apart from fiction.
Rular: A colloquial verb used to say that something is working or moving.
Example:
Esto no rula, ¿seguro que no está roto?
This isn’t working, are you sure it isn’t broken?
Potar: A slang verb to say vomit, similar to saying puke or barf in English. There’s also the expression echar la pota. Pota is vomit as a noun.
Example:
¡Ni se te ocurra echar la pota en mi coche!
Don’t you dare puke in my car!
Portuñol: A combination of Portuguese and Spanish, similar to how Spanglish is used to refer to a mix of English and Spanish.
Example:
Yo la verdad que chapurreo el portugués, más bien hablo portuñol.
In all honesty I fumble through Portuguese, if anything I speak ‘Portuñol’.
Sesión golfa: ‘Naughty’ performance or screening at a theatre, cinema, nightclub or otherwise held after 1am and usually of an adult nature.
Example:
Puedes esperarte todo tipo de locuras durante la sesión golfa en la Sala X.
You can expect all kinds of madness during the naughty hour at the Sala X.
Gusa: A colloquial way of saying hunger. It could be derived from the expression matar el gusanillo, which means to take the edge off your hunger (although its literal translation is 'to kill the worm').
Example:
¡Qué gusa tengo! Estoy que me como un jabalí.
I’m so hungry! I could eat a wildbore.
Cuarentañero: A forty-something person, cuarentañera to refer to a woman. How this wasn’t already in the Spanish dictionary we don’t know, as it’s common to also say veinteañero (twenty-something), treintañero (thirty-something), cincuentañero (fifty-something), sesentañero (sixty-something) and so on.
Example:
Es una cuarentañera con tres hijos pero eso no le ha impedido ser jefa de una empresa.
She’s a forty-something woman with three kids but that hasn’t prevented her becoming a company boss.
Comments (1)
See Also
Mamitis: colloquial way of talking about the excessive attachment and favouritism a child has for their mother. Papitis is also used when referring to a dad, and there’s been some controversy as it hasn’t been included in the dictionary.
Example:
Raúl tiene un serio caso de mamitis. No se quiere despegar de su madre.
Raúl has a serious case of ‘mumitis’. He doesn’t want to leave his mother’s side.
Micromachismo: A misogynistic microaggression. According to Oxfam, some examples of this are choosing pink for girls and blue for boys, for a man to always pay the bill, saying that women and men can't be friends and not using inclusive language.
Example:
Irene Montero quiere acabar con los micromachismos en el trabajo.
Irene Montero wants to get rid of misogynistic microaggressions in the workplace.
Puntocom: The same as spelling out ‘dotcom’ in English. Although anglicisms are becoming more prevalent in Spanish tech talk, there are still words Spaniards prefer to translate, such as buscador for a search engine.
Example:
La búrbuja puntocom causó estragos en la bolsa.
The dot-com bubble caused havoc in the stock market.
Conspiranoia: A noun which is a combination of the Spanish words for conspiracy and paranoia, referring to the tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. The adjective is conspiranoico/a.
Example:
Es bastante conspiranoico, cree que las torres gemelas las derrumbó la CIA.
He’s quite the conspiracy theorist, he thinks the Twin Towers were blown up by the CIA.
Garciamarquiano: Characteristic or reminiscent of the ‘magic realism’ writings of Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, similar to how Kafkaesque or Orwellian are used. Cortazariano, used to denote similarity with the work of Julio Cortázar, has also been added.
Example:
Es una situación garciamarquiana en la que no se distingue la realidad de la ficción.
It’s a ‘Garciamarquesque’ situation where truth can’t be told apart from fiction.
Rular: A colloquial verb used to say that something is working or moving.
Example:
Esto no rula, ¿seguro que no está roto?
This isn’t working, are you sure it isn’t broken?
Potar: A slang verb to say vomit, similar to saying puke or barf in English. There’s also the expression echar la pota. Pota is vomit as a noun.
Example:
¡Ni se te ocurra echar la pota en mi coche!
Don’t you dare puke in my car!
Portuñol: A combination of Portuguese and Spanish, similar to how Spanglish is used to refer to a mix of English and Spanish.
Example:
Yo la verdad que chapurreo el portugués, más bien hablo portuñol.
In all honesty I fumble through Portuguese, if anything I speak ‘Portuñol’.
Sesión golfa: ‘Naughty’ performance or screening at a theatre, cinema, nightclub or otherwise held after 1am and usually of an adult nature.
Example:
Puedes esperarte todo tipo de locuras durante la sesión golfa en la Sala X.
You can expect all kinds of madness during the naughty hour at the Sala X.
Gusa: A colloquial way of saying hunger. It could be derived from the expression matar el gusanillo, which means to take the edge off your hunger (although its literal translation is 'to kill the worm').
Example:
¡Qué gusa tengo! Estoy que me como un jabalí.
I’m so hungry! I could eat a wildbore.
Cuarentañero: A forty-something person, cuarentañera to refer to a woman. How this wasn’t already in the Spanish dictionary we don’t know, as it’s common to also say veinteañero (twenty-something), treintañero (thirty-something), cincuentañero (fifty-something), sesentañero (sixty-something) and so on.
Example:
Es una cuarentañera con tres hijos pero eso no le ha impedido ser jefa de una empresa.
She’s a forty-something woman with three kids but that hasn’t prevented her becoming a company boss.
Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.
Please log in here to leave a comment.