Yesterday I talked about the difficult but important Spanish word echar, and promised to write a follow-up post to explain some of its colloquial uses.
As if the ‘normal use’ of the word isn’t difficult enough as it often doesn’t make any sense, the colloquial uses of the word are even worse. Again, I strongly recommend just learning the expressions you find in the dictionary instead of trying to understand the structure of the word.
As discussed yesterday, echar can mean “to throw [out]“. In line with this it can mean “to sack” in a colloquial context as well. Next to that it’s also used as a synonym to “to tell”, “to impose” and “to show” (see ’sentences’ for examples).
Sentences (all are colloquial expressions)
¿Qué echan en la tele?
What’s on TV?
¿Cuántos años me echas?
How old do you think I am?
Echó un sermón.
He gave me a real talking-to.
Estás echando barriga.
You’re getting a bit of a tummy.
Le echaron una multa.
They gave him a fine.
Me echaron dos años.
I got two years.
*Sentences taken from “Concise Oxford Spanish Dictionary”.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Related Posts:
Spanish Word of the Day: echar
Spanish Word of the Day: pasar
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
So how do you say I miss my home
Echo de menos mi tierra
and what about if you use a specific person’s name?
Exactly. For a specific name you simply replace “mi tierra” by the person’s name.
Muchas gracias!
My teacher in Guatemala taught me the expression “echar flores” which I think means either to compliment or to flirt (or maybe both). Have you heard of this or its variants (I think you can replace flores with other words)?
Never heard of that expression. But then again, Spanish has quite some regional variations.