We love expressions. That is why, every week, we show you different idioms that will help you enrich your oral expression. In some of our latest posts, we have talked about venir al pelo (being ideal) and tirarse de los pelos (pulling your hair out).

In the same vein, today we are going to talk about two more expressions: caérsele a alguien el pelo and no cortarse ni un pelo. Keep reading in English or click here to switch to the Spanish version of this post. Off we go!

If you have ever heard someone say se te va a caer el pelo, we have bad news for you. This expression literally means that your hair is going to fall out. That doesn't sound very appealing, does it? As you may guess, it means that you will soon be facing the bad consequences of your actions. In other words, you are in trouble!

Let’s have a look at an example. Imagine your mother lends you one of her dresses to go out for dinner. At the restaurant, you spill your drink all over it. You know that she will be mad at you when you get home, and your friends tell you:

¡Has ensuciado el vestido de tu madre! Se te va a caer el pelo.

(You have spoiled your mother’s dress! You are going to be in trouble).

Tracking the origin of these kinds of expressions is never an easy thing to do. We can imagine that, as a consequence of an upsetting event, stress may cause someone’s hair to fall outn. This is exactly what happened to Picio, a very popular character in the Spanish proverbs collection whose story is often used to describe the meaning of this saying.

Legend has it that this shoemaker from the 19^th century was sentenced to death for a crime he had not committed. Right before the execution, he was proved innocent and released. However, the anxiety from his days on death row made him lose all his hair. ¡A Picio se le cayó el pelo!

Let’s go back to the stained dress. It could be said that your mother no se cortaría un pelo in punishing you for getting it dirty. What does this mean? That she has no qualms about making you pay for spoiling her clothes.

In other words: no le va a temblar la mano (her hand is not going to shake) or no se va a pensar dos veces (she is not going to think twice) before grounding you. All these are equivalent expressions. That is to say, you can’t escape! Do you want to know more about the origin of this popular saying?

A single hair is something small, thin, and not worth much compared to a whole head of hair. Because of this, no cortarse un pelo (not cutting one hair) symbolizes not caring about something. It won’t matter to your mother that you regret spoiling her dress. She is going to punish you anyway sin cortarse un pelo.

That's our review of the Spanish proverbs collection for today. If you would like to keep learning new expressions to surprise everyone with your Spanish, we invite you to click on the video below and get some more practice.

After talking about expressions such as no tener un pelo de tonto (being not the least bit foolish) and no tener pelos en la lengua (not mincing your words), today we present you with a new expression where hair is key: venir al pelo. Keep reading in English or click here to switch to the Spanish version of this post and spice up your oral expression!

Some expressions such as pulling your hair out are very international and have a meaning that is easily understandable by everyone. However, other sayings are more symbolic and need a short explanation to be correctly interpreted.

This is the case with venir al pelo. In Spanish, we use this expression to describe something that appears to suit a situation perfectly. For example, in the sentence below:

La pregunta de Carmen me viene al pelo para introducir el siguiente tema de la lección.

(Carmen’s question is ideal for me to introduce the next topic of this lesson).

This means that the question Carmen had is very convenient because it serves as a perfect link to the next lesson.

To better understand the origins of this expression, we have to look at its opposite: a contrapelo (against the grain). Both phrases refer to fur used for clothing, accessories, or decoration. The use of fur was very common in the past.

Fur feels different depending on the direction in which we pass our hand over it. If we follow the direction of the hair, it will feel soft and smooth. However, if we go against the grain, we will get a rougher feel.

Similarly, something that viene al pelo (suits the hair) is something that lets the natural discourse of things run smoothly, like the direction of fur.

Now that you know what venir al pelo means, we invite you to watch the video below and discover other expressions with hair. Remember that your Spanish will be richer if you use more of these expressions in your daily speech!

Pelo ("hair") is a very special word in Spanish. Just like pan ("bread") and other terms, hair is the protagonist of many expressions and sayings we use on a daily basis. One of them is tirarse de los pelos (pull on your hair). If you want to read this post in Spanish and learn what it means, click here.

In the complex world of expressions, there is a big difference between what we think they mean and what they actually imply. This is one of those cases. If anyone tells you not to pull on your hair in Spanish, you might think he or she is crazy. Obviously, pulling on your hair was not among your top priorities. However, this expression means something quite different.

Pulling on one's hair is an expression of rage or extreme sadness for someone who is overwhelmed by a certain situation. When something turns out bad and the solution is out of our hands, we pull on our hair: nos tiramos de los pelos. But not literally. We just despair.

For example, if you study a lot for an exam and still you fail it, estás que te tiras de los pelos (you feel like pulling on your hair). This means that it annoys you, but you can’t do anything to fix it. Sometimes, when people consider your problem is not that important, they will ask you not to pull on your hair:

¡No te tires de los pelos, que no es para tanto! La próxima vez, tendrás más suerte.

(Don’t pull on your hair, it is not that bad! Next time, you will have more luck).

There are two ancient expressions that are very similar to this one. They are mesarse los cabellos and mesarse las barbas. Both mean literally pulling your own hair out. (English as a similar saying.) But what is the origin of all these expressions?

During the Middle Ages, pulling your hair out was a typical mourning gesture. The loss of a loved person was acted out by grabbing your own hair or beard and pulling strongly. Some people beat themselves up as well. Occasionally, this practice also took place before a friend or family member set off on a dangerous journey.

Now that you know the real meaning of this expression, relax and look at problems in a more optimistic way. ¡No te tires de los pelos!

If you want to know more about the world of Spanish expressions, we invite you to watch this video. Expand your vocabulary and make your Spanish sound more natural by using expressions with hair.

Ganarse el pan or earn someone’s daily bread is just one of many Spanish expressions that point at food to convey a secondary meaning. The phrase we are presenting you in this post is often used to talk about hard work. If you want to read this in Spanish and click here, you'll learn more about earning your daily bread.

Here you go with an example of how this expression is used:

Juan trabaja en el campo y se gana el pan con el sudor de su frente.

(Juan works in the fields and earns his daily bread with hard work).

From the beginning of civilization, bread has always been a priceless symbol. It has inspired stories, it has led to wars and forced men to travel. Today, it is still a diet basic in many cultures.

Ancient texts talk about manna, an edible substance God provided his people with in the desert.

Bread has also been used as a social uprisings deterrent. Marie Antoinette gave brioches away to calm the French Revolution crowd down.

In the Soviet Union, baguettes were inflated with air to ease the protests against food rationing.

Among the many religious references pointing at this food, like the breaking of bread in the Eucharist or its absence during Ramadan, the Bible introduces the concept we are talking about in this post: earning someone’s bread.

When God casts Adam and Eve out of Paradise for having disobeyed, he inflicts a punishment on each traitor. The snake is forced to crawl forever and have an everlasting fight with the human race. Eve is condemned to suffer painful childbirth. Lastly, Adam faces the sanction of having to work in order to survive. These are his words:

By the sweat of your face, you shall eat your bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

There is no evidence that indicates when this expression started to be used to speak of the effort that survival requires. However, all these ancient references seem to suggest that the relationship between bread and life, and work and pain have been in the oral tradition for a long time.

If you want to learn more expressions with bread, we invite you to watch this video with eight ways to enrich your Spanish while talking about bread:

Bread, in all its varieties, is a basic food and a very important component of human diets.

It runs through our lives so much that, sometimes, it leaves the kitchen to enter the universe of language. For this reason, there are many expressions that contain references to bread.  

In our previous posts, we learned the meaning behind some of these expressions, such as ser más bueno que el pan (being a very good person) or estar de toma pan y moja (being very attractive).

Today, we would like to explain what is behind the expression más largo que un día sin pan (longer than a day without bread). If you prefer to read this article in Spanish, please click here.

In Spanish, being longer than a day without bread may stand for two different things. The first one is the most commonly used one. It is employed to describe something that becomes tough due to its long duration.

For example, a bad day at work can last longer than a day without bread.

The second meaning of this expression is applied to people. If someone is longer than a day without bread, then it means he or she is very tall. For example:

Mi amigo Juan es más largo que un día sin pan. Mide casi dos metros.

If you want to learn more about the close relationship between Spaniards and bread, we invite you to discover our learning programs in Spain.

If someone has ever told you that you estás de toma pan y moja (to take bread and dip), congratulations! That is actually a compliment. Another version of the same saying is estás para mojar pan.

Read this article in Spanish

This expression is used in Spain to positively value someone’s physical appearance. In other words, you are a beauty!

To better understand the origin of this expression, we must look at gastronomy. Bread is such a basic food for Spaniards that they even use it in their sayings.

Have you ever tasted a dish so delicious that you wish it was never over?

In these cases, it is almost a sin to miss a drop of it. To leave the dish completely clean, we have our eternal ally: bread.

All in all, dipping a piece of bread in the dish indicates that food has an amazing flavor.

This is not the only case in which we use expressions related to food to describe different kinds of people. For example, ser más bueno que el pan (being better than bread) means being a very good person.

If something is pan comido (or eaten bread), then it’s very easy. In order to earn your bread (ganarse el pan), however, you will have to work very hard. In Spanish, babies come with a bread under their arm (un pan debajo del brazo). That is to say, they are a blessing.

Another example of using food to comment on someone’s good looks is the expression estar como un queso (be like cheese). This culinary synergy between beauty and food runs deep in the Spanish culture.

Discover more common Spanish expressions with bread by watching our video:

Has anyone ever said to you, “No tienes ni un pelo de tonto” (you don’t have even one foolish hair)?

Don’t worry. It’s kind of a strange thing to say, but it’s not an insult.

In fact, it’s quite the opposite!

If you don’t have even one foolish hair, that means you’re a smart person with your wits about you, someone who’s difficult to trick or fool.

Read this article in Spanish

No tener ni un pelo de tonto is just one of many Spanish sayings that talk about hair.

When used in colloquial expressions, pelo (hair) usually refers to a small quantity of something or to something that just barely happens.

A hair is one of the smallest and finest (but still visible) parts of the body. In fact, we lose hair from our head every day, often without realizing it.

That’s why when we use the word pelo as part of an expression, we’re referring to a small amount of something.

So, if someone says, “No tienes ni un pelo de tonto,” what do they mean? Well, just the opposite of what it might seem.

They are trying to say that you’re not the least bit foolish.

This means they’re paying you a compliment!

If you want to keep free of “foolish hairs” and learn more Spanish expressions with pelo, watch our video and find out all you have left to learn!

• Hey, Juan.
• What’s up, Luis? Is everything okay?
• Yeah, everything’s fine. I just want to talk to you for a second. Do you have a minute?
• Sure, what’s going on?
• Well, look. For a while now I’ve been trying to think of a way to surprise my mom for her birthday. I haven’t had much luck, but today I had the idea of taking her on a tour of the theaters downtown, I’m sure she’ll love it.
• Good idea!
• But hey, you can’t tell anyone, okay? I don’t want her to find out before her birthday.
• Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.
• Thanks!

If after this conversation Luis’s mom comes along and starts to pester Juan, asking him what her son said, what he’s going to give her, saying not to worry because she won’t say anything, and things of that nature, what Luis’s mom is doing is tirar de la lengua (pulling on someone’s tongue… in this case, Juan’s.)

Read this article in Spanish

If you insist that someone tells you something you know they’re not supposed to, in Spanish we say that you’re pulling their tongue (le estás tirando de la lengua).

Why do we say that?

The origins of this saying aren’t clear, but the truth is, it’s easy to visualize.

Metaphorically speaking, your words and everything you say comes from your tongue. Therefore, continuing with the metaphor, if someone could pull on your tongue, they could see all the words you don’t want to say written all over it.

Of course, since that’s not actually possible, the expression tirar de la lengua is used to say that a person is being very insistent, perhaps overly insistent, to try to get someone to tell them what they want to hear.

If you want to know and discover more expressions with lengua, take a look at this video and you’ll be able to speak in Spanish whenever you want.

The tongue — the muscle that allows us to speak Spanish whenever we want. It’s also a recurring theme in several common Spanish expressions.

It’s a word that causes a lot of headaches. Why in Spanish do we say morderse la lengua (bite your tongue) when you’re not really going to bite it?

Read this article in Spanish

And what in the world are people with lengua de trapo (rag tongue)? It must be impossible for someone to talk with a rag in their mouth…

These are just a couple of the many Spanish sayings that use the word lengua, or tongue. Today we’re going to take a closer look at these two expressions: morderse la lengua and lengua de trapo.

Surely this has happened to you at some point in your life…

Someone you know comes up to you and tells you something extremely personal. It’s something very important, so they ask you to please not tell anyone. You tell them not to worry, you won’t.

Then, if someone else comes and asks you what the person said, you’ll have to morderte la lengua (bite your tongue) to make sure you don’t repeat a single word of what was said.

You can also use this expression in a different context. Imagine you’re at work and you’ve just finished a very important project. Suddenly, when you go to present it, your boss tells everyone that he was the one who did it. It‘s possible that to avoid having problems with your boss, you may decide to morderte la lengua and not say anything to anyone that would reveal the truth.

As you can see, morderse la lengua means that you don’t say anything, you resist the temptation to tell someone something that you have to keep quiet, whatever the reason.

On the other hand, tener lengua de trapo is completely different.

Have you ever heard a young child talk?

When children are around one and a half or two years old, they begin to speak their first intelligible words.

They try to express themselves by imitating what they’ve heard from their parents or other people around them. The problem is that most of the time, they’re not able to pronounce the words correctly, and adults can’t understand what they’re trying to say.

This way of speaking or babbling is what we’re referring to when we say someone has a lengua de trapo (rag tongue). It really sounds like they have a piece of rag in their mouth instead of a tongue.

You know what?

There are lots of other expressions with lengua, so if you want to learn even more, watch this video and we’ll tell you all about them.

Each language has its details, curiosities, history and traditions. But it’s undeniable that Spanish is a language full of expressions and with hundreds and hundreds of synonyms.

The following is only a sample.

You know what a tongue is.

Read the Spanish version

It’s a muscle in the mouth used to speak and to taste. And, tongue is also synonymous with language: the Spanish tongue, the English tongue... But, there is still more. “Lengua” is Spanish for tongue, and in Spanish, lengua can also be a strip of cloth or any elongated, narrow material. But when we look at sayings that involve the tongue, we can see that Spanish and English are quite close…

If they tell you that you are running around with your tongue hanging out (con la lengua fuera), it means that you are going around in a hurry, rushing all over the place. Just imagine, when someone is running and suddenly stops, usually what happens is, because of fatigue, they open their mouth to catch their breath. Suddenly the tongue is visible after so much hurrying about.

However, if someone tells you that you are a tongue wagger (dando la lengua), they mean you are a charlatan. In order to speak, the essential muscle is the tongue. So, if you are moving it a great deal it means that you’re talking a lot, without stopping.

But beware, that is very different from using a prodigal tongue (irse de la lengua). This doesn’t mean this person talks a lot, it means they talk too much, divulging things such as secrets or other confidential information.

So to avoid this, the best thing to do is to bite your tongue (morderse la lengua). But don’t worry, you won’t hurt yourself. Biting your tongue helps to quash the urge to say something. In other words, to not say anything that you might later regret, it is better to bite your tongue and not say it.

But of course, surely you have been in the situation more than once where you have been pressured to talk about something. And after enough insistence, something slipped out and you ended up giving information you hadn’t intended to. Well today you’re going to discover that you have just run across someone who had the ability to loosen your tongue (tirar de la lengua). It is the way we have of saying that one person has strongly urged another to tell him something that, perhaps, he should not have.

And when young children are learning to talk, we say that they trip over their tongue (or have a lengua de trapo). Well no. Children learning to talk don’t actually step on their tongues. it’s just that, since they are beginning to learn, they don’t pronounce well and have a limited vocabulary; it’s as if the words don’t come out properly. Have you ever had that feeling, like sometimes all that comes out is baby talk?

Finally, if you meet a person who has a sharp tongue (or sin pelos en la lengua), you have a direct, sincere and critical person, who will tell you exactly what they think, even when it is not the most appropriate time for it.

So, after this review, you will have noticed that we went from being children and tripping over our tongue, then we grew a little and we couldn’t stop wagging our tongue. As we grow older we always go around with our tongue hanging out, but we try not have a prodigal tongue with people that try to loosen our tongue and, for that reason, we try to bite our tongue. Now, when we must tell the truth, we use our sharp tongue.

What a tongue-twister!

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