Joy of Spanish
More madres and tacos
Rowena Resnikoff of England has a five year-old son who wonders why his football shoes are called “tacos.” This question was inspired by the taco column of a few weeks ago.
The word taco, of course, means many things to many people. There are tacos, or sticks of dynamite and there are tacos for playing billiards (pool cues). Both these objects give us a hint as to why football shoes are called tacos: because of the cylindrical knobs on their soles. As a matter of fact, the very first dictionary definition of taco goes something like this: “A piece of wood, metal, or any other material, short and thick, that fits in a hole.” Then it goes on to be more general and more specific: “Any short, thick piece of wood.”When you step on a playing field with football shoes, you leave an imprint. This gives one a good idea of what a taco is according to the first definition. The hole the taco fits into is the same one it creates when we walk while wearing football shoes. By calling the whole shoe a taco, however, we partake in the glories of what rhetoricians call “synecdoche”: a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part.
A common example of synecdoche these days is the following question: “How many heads of cattle did you lose to the drought?” It is obvious that the rancher hasn’t only lost his cattle’s heads, but entire animals. By referring to them as “heads” he means the whole enchilada. By the same logic football shoes are called tacos, in honor of the short, round pluggy things they have on their soles. This also explains why baseball shoes are not called tacos: they have cleats, which possess a different form altogether. I hope this answers Ms. Resnikoff’s question.
In honor of Mother’s Day I received a wonderful fax from Paulina Lavista. For those who do not know Paulina’s work, she is one of Mexico’s most important contemporary photographers. A propos of the word padre, she notes that the word most in vogue in the 50’s was vaciado: “¡Qué vaciado!”
The word vaciado, taken literally, means “emptied” as in “Have you emptied the garbage?” For some strange reason I cannot even begin to fathom, this past participle has come to mean “funny,” “interesting,” or “peculiar.” And not only in the 50’s. It is still used generously, although I acknowledge the fact that people 40 and older use it more than those 30 and younger.
Ms. Lavista also points out that I seemed to have passed up the opportunity to analyze the phrase de poca, which is short for de poca madre. Well… The truth is I didn’t want to put anybody off. “Madre” expressions are legion in Mexico, and they can get very aggressive. This particular phrase, de poca madre, is very interesting because it means two different and even opposite things at the same time.
You may remember from that particular column that the word madre in Spanish frequently has negative nuances. When we say that something, or someone, has “little mother” we mean that it, or they, is truly bad. Let’s say the principal suspended my friend for three days just because he broke a classroom window after failing algebra for the third time. I might come out with “¡Qué poca madre!”, while referring to the principal. “What an a**hole—!”
We can also say that to do something bad is de poca madre, as in this example: “Es de poca madre tirar agua en tiempos de sequía.” (“It’s really criminal to waste water when there’s a drought on.”) This can go on and on because there are several million terrible things happening every day that we can catalogue as being de poca madre, and we may credit everybody from politicians to lawyers, bankers to sports figures, tv programs to tendentious internet goings-on, like this column…
But that doesn’t explain the flip side to all of this. De poca madre also means just the opposite of everything we’ve just seen. When we are really impressed by something, if we sincerely like or admire it, we also say it’s of little mother.
—¿Ya viste Jumanji?—¡Sí! ¡La escena de los rinocerantes es de poca madre!
(“Have you seen Jumanji?” / “Yes! The scene with the rhinoceroses is really great!”)
If anyone seriously wants to dip into the possibilities of this phrase, Gloria Trevi has a song called “A la madre” on her album Mas… turbada que nunca. She touches just about every base in the lyrics, a true hymn to poca motherhood. ¡A toda madre!
Before signing off for today, I would like to quote the conversation Paulina Lavista overheard between her 14 year-old son and a friend of his:
—¡Hola, güey! ¿Qué onda?—Me compré un compact que está de poca.
—Trae la canción que oímos en Lady [la discoteca].—Está de pelos, poca madre, güey.—¿Adónde iremos? Tengo ganas de echar desmadre.
—El cuate ese es un sacón. No se tomó ni una chela.
—Las chavas están poca agüela, me cae…
—Adios, güey, llévate tu celular, órale, a las cinco…If anyone needs a translation, you know where to e-mail me. Just leave my mother out of it. Okay? (Just kidding, I think.)
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