Spanish Word of the Day: sabelotodo

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Sam Wilson

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Jul 3, 2020, 6:03:15 AM7/3/20
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LiCR,

el/la sabelotodo - a know-it-all, or for Berni: a know-all


sabelotodo

 (informal)
INVARIABLE MASCULINE AND FEMININE NOUN
know-all (Brit) (informal) ⧫ know-it-all (US) (informal) 

  • Eres un sabelotodo que en realidad no tiene ni idea de nada.
    You're a know-all who actually doesn't know anything.

--
Sam

Joe Harrison

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Jul 3, 2020, 12:43:16 PM7/3/20
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Or, to put el ejemplo another way:  Eres un sabelotodo que en realidad no sabe  la mierda de la lustra zapatos marca Shinola.  Hmmm, doesn't quite hack it, does it?  jijiji

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Gene French

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Jul 3, 2020, 1:16:55 PM7/3/20
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Even i caught the gist of that one!!!
🤣🤣🤣

Don Hickman

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Jul 3, 2020, 2:39:37 PM7/3/20
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Gist was about it.  Ouch.  🥺

don Jhon

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Jul 4, 2020, 9:40:29 AM7/4/20
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I am not sure why but this reminded me of "monosabio" from my vast vocabulario de tauromaquia.  Which is near totally worthless for conversations in CR.

monosabios.JPG

 

Sam Wilson

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Jul 4, 2020, 11:07:01 AM7/4/20
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Thanks for sharing, don Jhon!

That is an interesting word I hadn't heard before.  We do have bull-riding and taunting of the bull by improvisados in Costa Rica, just not anything like real bullfights where the bull (or matador) gets killed.  I'm sure everyone has seen how we do it in Costa Rica -- a little bit of bull-riding mixed in with bouts o f whomever wants to jump into the ring (los improvisados) taunting the bull, sometimes with games of bravery (or foolishness) mixed in.  I've only jumped in the ring twice, both times quite under the influence of Tequila.  Fortunately the bull never once came my way and I never felt like running after the damn things in my snakeskin boots anyway.  jajaja.

Especially funny in light of your foto...

Origen del nombre[editar]

El nombre de monosabio procede de un espectáculo circense que tuvo lugar en Madrid hacia 1847 y en el que una cuadrilla de monos amaestrados realizaba una serie de habilidades con el nombre artístico de los «monos sabios». Estos simios vestían unos blusones de color encarnado y al público madrileño le dio por compararlos con los uniformes que vestían los mozos de caballos, llamados hasta entonces con el nombre genérico de chulos. El nombre tuvo fortuna y los «monos sabios» acabaron lexicalizándose en una sola palabra –monosabios– incorporada desde entonces al léxico taurino y admitida posteriormente en el DRAE.

Origin of the name

Origin of the name monosabio comes from a circus show that took place in Madrid around 1847 in which a gang of trained monkeys, named "Wise Monkeys" performed a series of skillful tricks. These monkeys wore red blouses and the Madrid public thought they looked like the uniforms worn by the horse handlers, called up to that point, "chulos".  The name "monos sabios" stuck and later joined to become the single word "monosabios" which to this day is in the bullfighting lexicon and it has since been added to the DRAE (Diccionario de la lengua español).


Thanks for sharing some interesting words and a window into the Spanish bullfighting world.

--
Sam

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 7:40 AM don Jhon <jck...@gmail.com> wrote:
I am not sure why but this reminded me of "monosabio" from my vast vocabulario de tauromaquia.  Which is near totally worthless for conversations in CR.

monosabios.JPG

 

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