Spanish Expression of the Day: ¡qué fuerte!

Today an expression I just learned a few weeks ago here in Spain. It’s an expression that (especially young) people use, and they generally use it on the street (that means; I’ve never heard anyone using this expression on television). The expression in question is ¡qué fuerte!.

You might translate this expression literally to “what strong!”, but that’s (of course) totally wrong. It’s not in the dictionary so I’ll give you a general definition of it: “The expression ‘qué fuerte‘ is often used as an exclamation to say ‘wow!’, ‘oh my god!’ or ‘no way!’, or just to express surprise”. I personally would add “holy shit!” to the definition, but the expression is often not that “fuerte“.

It’s a bit difficult to give an exact translation of the expression and I doubt if it’s really possible. The upside is that it’s an expression you can use even if you don’t like swearing, while on the other hand it can be quite harsh (for example: both “no way!” and “no f*cking way” would translate to ¡qué fuerte!).

Tagged as: colloquial, expression, slang, spanish slang, spanish word, word of the day, youngster