Del marote As per usual, I won’t divulge who we were talking about but someone was described as del marote in the newsroom. Let’s get the word marote out the way first, which I wasn’t familiar with. It’s a lunfardo term for “head” or general intelligence which according to the Royal Spanish Academy dictionary comes from the French word for mannequin head (marotte).
To be del marote or its more common variant de la cabeza, then, means to be “off one’s head” or foolish — está de la cabeza, they’re off their rocker. Funny that the Spanish version is “of” one’s head instead of “off”: our wild particularities are innate, thanks. Me clavó el visto This is a simple one, really, meaning to leave someone on read but it led to an unfortunate Spanglish translation of “stab me the seen” by Facundo.
As in English, it refers to when you see that someone has opened or seen your message but for whatever reason isn’t answering. But as the graphic literal translation implies, we take it a bit more personally in Spanish, with the verb clavar (nail, drive, stab) hinting that the person is assaulting you with the read receipt. This isn’t a new idea that came with the arrival of Facebook and WhatsApp: in Argentina, we already used clavar to say someone left you hanging or didn’t show up (me clavaste or lo dejaste clavado).
Rather the opposite of its English counterpart. Gamba Including gamba here as a cheeky way to make this, our 100th translation trou.
