Sunday’s word (joder) attracted quite some visitors: more than a whopping 15,000 hits it received over the last three days. Coincidence? I don’t know, but it’s the first more or less vulgar word discussed at this blog, and it got massive attention right away. Although I love all these new visitors (especially stumblers: WELCOME!), I’m not going to post a vulgar word every day. Still, the discussion that developed in the comments was quite interesting and resulted in today’s word: coño.
Coño is, in general, considered as an extremely vulgar word. To put it mildly, it means the feminine genitalia (or ‘c*nt’ if you don’t like the mild stuff). It can also be translated to ‘f*cking hell’ or ‘bloody hell’. Still, it’s used among men (and to a lesser extent women) in Spain as an exclamation.
*Note: As pointed out in the comments, the word coño has no real meaning in many parts of Latin-America. Instead, the word concha can be used in Argentina, Chile, Peru or Uruguay.
**Extra Note: Long-time visitor Graham added this quote from the book “Pardon my Spanish!”. Thanks Graham!:
“Coño is one of the most offensive words in the Spanish language and is always considered to be vulgar. Nevertheless, it is widely used for emphasis and as an interjection, and it is not unusual for it to be said by politicians or businessmen or in front of members of one’s own family in these senses. Whilst for sense 1(a), the translation c*nt might seem to be the obvious choice, in fact coño lacks the taboo and sexist connotations often still associated with this English term, and it is much more commonly used by both men and women to refer to the vagina.”
Sentences
¿Qué coño te pasa?
What the hell is wrong with you?
¿Dónde coño has estado?
Where the f*ck have you been?
¿Quién coño es este?
Who the hell is this?
*Sentences taken from Wordreference.com.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Related Posts:
Spanish Word of the Day: guiri
Spanish Word of the Day: coña
Spanish Word of the Day: joder
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Spanish Word of the Day: puta
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“Coño” is a great word
I will follow your blog with interest…
Sobre tu comentario sobre las visitas que tuviste a raiz del “Joder” te cuento que en varios blogs se posteo un link a tu pagina sobre eso.
El motivo de este comentario es para hacerte una correccion, la palabra “coño” no se usa para nada en Latino America, donde si se usa mucho es en España. En Latino America el equivalente a “Coño” es “Concha” (que en España es nombre de mujer)
Por eso te digo…ANDATE A LA CONCHA DE TU HERMANA!!!
jaja buen comment Pepe, son de 4ta estos tipos
“Coño is, in general (and especially in Latin-American), considered as an extremely vulgar word. ” that’s NOT TRUE. You’re giving a very wrong impression. Here in Argentina we say coño ONLY when we act like we where spanish as a joke. You can say that anywhere, you won’t offend nobody. Argentinian equivalent would be… CONCHA.
¡Chau!
I was told many years ago that this originated from the saying ‘Acona tu Nai’ meaning the c*nt of your mother. From this is became just Coño. I was not sure of the validity of this until I read this blog. Does anyone else have any more on this?
On another note. There was even a store in Miami Beach name ño! that had t-shirts with the same as ño is the even shorter version of this oh so multi-use word.
Patty: Cona is Coño in Galician and nai is mother… The phrase is “A cona da tua nai” The c*nt of your mother. You can say “Cago na cona” that is something like “fucking shit!” but is Galician. I don’t know nothing about “ño”…
Here,in the Canary Islands (Spain,nearby Africa),the people use “ño” ( it sounds “ñooo”),it does not mean c*nt,just something like “wow” or “what the…”
But remember,only in the Canary Islands,if you say “ño” in the rest of Spain,nobody knows what are you talking about.
About the visitors: a very popular Spanish blog (“Microsiervos WTF”) linked your post about “joder”. That´s how I got here.
Like other Argentinians have allready said, “coño” means nothing in Argentina. Latin-America is very big, and is a very big mistake to think that Spanish is spoken the same way all over the continent. I think that you could write “México” instead of “Latin-America” in most of your posts, and that would make them more accurate. You have to be very carefull about Argentina (and Uruguay), because Spanish is very different there. You have a parody of this fact (a bit exagerated, but funny) that you can read here.
Alan’s last blog post..Diario del internauta neófito: 6. El Blog
The Spanish word coño, the Galician cona and the Catalan cony, all derived from the Latin word cunniculus, which is a diminutive for cunnus (vulva).
In Spain, the word conejo (rabbit) is a synonymous with coño (I don’t know if this is true for other Spanish-speaking countries). As I said above, cunniculus means little vulva in Latin. But there is a very similar Latin word: cuniculus (rabbit, burrow). Probably, both words merged, due to their likeness, into cuniculus, but holding all their meanings. This is a very useful way to create euphemisms. Finally, cuniculus evolved to present-time conejo, but lost the meaning burrow on the way.
Thanks for the corrections. The reason why I assumed it’s vulgar in LA is because some friends of mine from el área del caribe and México said so. Will change it a bit. Thanks!
No me toques el coño (=los huevos/cojones/ovarios) = Don’t piss me off!
Y tambien se dice estoy hasta el coño (tambien intercambiable por ovarios,huevos o cojones), que seria estar harto de algo (ahora mismo no me se me ocurre la traduccion al ingles, perdona!)
Ovarios seria una manera mas fina de decirlo y considerada menos vulgar y la usan solo las mujeres, pero coño/huevos/cojones lo usan ambos sexos.
Coño esta bastante mal visto, mas que mierda o joder o me caguen (me cago en…) y se considera MUY vulgar y barriobajero.
Tengo prisa asi que si puedo traduzco el post luego!
Jeje, no pasa nada
. Entiendo todo que has dicho 
. ¿De dónde eres? Porque muchos españoles creen que coño es una palabra vulgar, no MUY vulgar…
Pues estoy de acuerdo con ‘do you want to’. A mi parecer, “coño” es MUY vulgar, al menos cuando se usa para referirse a la vagina. No parece tan vulgar, o al menos no se ve así, si se usa cuando se está enfadado, simplemente “¡Coño!”, lo que traduces como “Bloody hell”, o como en “¿Qué coño te pasa?”
En general creo que si una mujer se refiere a su vagina como “coño” está usando una palabra muy vulgar. En el resto de los casos es una palabra muy extendida y, aunque vulgar, se usa muy a menudo.
Soy de Asturias, del norte
Aqui somos mas de usar el me caguen la virgen, la madre que te pario, la santina… etc que de coño xD Ademas de que usamos el bable/asturiano para los insultos como babayu (tonto)
Y como dijo MaRGa, coño seria muy vulgar si se refiere a los getinales,
como exclamacion estaria mas aceptado pero creo que joder esta mejor vista que coño.
Muy buen blog por cierto, a mis favoritos que va!
Pero bueno, como ya sabras con tantos paises y regiones distintas el idioma cambia mucho
I agree with “do you want to”. I think “coño”, the word only, is not “muy vulgar”, but in some sentences it could be:
“¿Donde coño has puesto el puto boligrafo?” -> “Where the hell did you put the fucking pen?” – Familiar.
“Yo hago lo que me sale del coño” – “I do whatever I want” – Muy vulgar.
P.D: I wrote this reply before reading Marga’s post; I basically agree with her.
This is all very interesting! Also interesting is the amount of interest this subject arouses
On a related note, what does the difference in meanings given to the ‘augmented’ coñazo and cojonudo tell us?
Graham’s last blog post..Una cigarra por la noche
It is true that here in Spain, “coño” is often used by men, and a large amount of women as well. But in many parts of Spain, women tend to use a modification of “coño”, which would be “coñe” … or even “…oñe…” (pronounced “coh-ñeh”) in an attempt to sound less vulgar. In the last case, they use it as an exclamation as to say “oh my!” “wow!” “f*ck!” “hell!” and sound puzzled but still not posh or snob enough to use a more delicate word… you get the idea.
It’s also true that in Argentina (and I guess Uruguay too), we don’t say “coño” at all, except when we want to impersonate a spanish-speaking person. This might not apply to Chile, I think I heard that they do use “coño” there.
South America’ Spanish is very different from Spanish language from Mexico and Spain itself.
Sorry for my English!
I live in Spain but I’m from Argentina
PS: “cojonudo” means “great!” and “coñazo” is something tricky, hard to do or to handle. It’s usually used for an action.
We also use alone the word “coño” when we get a inmediate fright or as a surprise exclamation (“¡Coño!”). Also, we use “coño ya” when want to stop someone who bother us.
Excuse if my English is not good enough.
Hi there.
The best word in Spanish is “cojones”.
Antonio Pérez-Reverte wrote a paper about this word. Here you are: http://asturianosdesanabria.es/node/724 (sorry: it is in spanish because in english it has no sense
).
Maybe you want to comment this word in any of your sections.
¡¡ See you !!
No me toques el coño (=los huevos/cojones/ovarios) = Don’t piss me off!
Creo personalmente que esa expresión no se usa, nunca lo he oído… suena demasiado literal. En todo caso se dice “¡No me toques los cojones (hombre) / ovarios (mujer)!” que es una adaptación que usan las mujeres que suena un poquito mejor y sí que se oye mucho.
I’ll give you something to think about: Why boring/annoying stuff is a “coñazo” and something great is “cojonudo”? XD
@Anonymous: It’s Arturo, not Antonio!
Nat’s last blog post..Pornografía infantil NO
“Sunday’s word (joder) attracted quite some visitors: more than a whopping 15,000 hits it received over the last three days. Coincidence? I don’t know,”
Yeah man!! In Spain we called it the Microsiervos effect XD
http://wtf.microsiervos.com/from-lost/spanish-only.html
Pepe Potamo’s last blog post..Cuestión filosófica
coño is not an ofensive word in spain … it’s an expression
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I recently read a book called “Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban,” and in this fiction the term “¡Coño!” was used a lot, implictly as an exclamation or a cuss word. Anybody translate how it’s meant in Cuban Spanish? Just how vulgar do Cubans think the word is? Thanks!
It’s used in the same way, but in in Cuba and other islands it’s used a lot on its own instead of in a sentence.
“Coño Men”!!!!
Gotta laugh!!! My 6 year old every now and them when he speaks via phone to my dad, his Cuban Grandpa, says “Hey, coño men!” Trust me he is clueless as to what he is saying!
Cant go worng with a Blonde Blue eyed 1/2 gringo saying that!