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!

Come join us at don Quijote and learn even more about the Spanish tongue.

Learning Spanish takes time. To make learning easier and more entertaining, today we’re bringing you a list of the best TV shows to learn Spanish depending on your level.

Grab a snack, get comfortable, and get ready to binge on some of the best TV series in Spanish.

Read this article in Spanish

First, for beginners, one of the best series is Cuéntame cómo pasó. It’s about the passing of time and the most important historical events that have happened in Spain from 1968 to 1986 (so far — the show’s still going). It’s the longest running Spanish TV show in history and revolves around what happens to the Alcántara family over the years.

Scene from Cuentame cómo pasó

Since it’s a show for the whole family, the dialogues are usually easy to follow and not too fast, with vocabulary that students of all Spanish levels can understand. It’s the perfect show to start learning Spanish or improve the level you already have.

If you want to hear what Spanish teenagers sound like, a good option is El internado. The story follows two orphan siblings, Marcos and Paula, who quickly discover that everyday life in an elite boarding school is anything but easy. Aside from not getting along with Iván, one of his classmates, Marcos starts to realize that strange things are happening at the school. Mystery, intrigue, high school crushes… this series has got it all, perfect for intermediate Spanish students who want to know how young people in Spain really talk.

Scene from El internado

To learn colloquial Spanish and listen to Spanish spoken by real people, both young and old, Los hombres de Paco is a very fun and entertaining show.

The series revolves around a typical police station. Paco, Lucas, and Mariano are a team of police officers who have big hearts but are clumsy and accident-prone. They complicate their cases, get tangled up in love affairs, show up at the wrong places… thanks to all the different situations they find themselves in, this is the perfect opportunity to hear Spanish as it’s spoken between friends, between adults, between young people, between work colleagues, and in the most common types of everyday situations. Watching this show is a good way to put the Spanish you already know into practice.

Scene from Los hombres de Paco

If you’re more interested in Spanish from Latin America, your best option is definitely Narcos. It follows the true and very dangerous story of an illegal cocaine trafficking network in Colombia. The leading man is Pablo Escobar, one of the biggest capos in history. The dialogue usually follows a relaxed pace, with characters speaking slowly and pausing frequently, making this a great way to learn Latin American Spanish in its purest form.

Scene from Narcos

Can’t make up your mind? For a little bit of everything, our recommendation is El ministerio del tiempo.

It’s a very special storyline. A team from the Ministry is in charge of making sure nobody travels back in time to change anything. Every time the team receives an alert, they’ve got to time travel immediately to make sure the past stays the same and protect the future. Because of the action, the show sometimes has fast dialogues, but other parts are slower, so you can hear Spanish spoken in an office environment, Spanish from other times in history, colloquial Spanish… a winning combination.

Scene from El Ministerio del Tiempo

Now you’ve got five fun ways to learn Spanish or perfect what you already know while you spend your lazy afternoons watching TV in Spanish.

Today we’re going to talk about the Spanish tongue. More concretely, about expressions that use tongue.

In other words, we’re going to have a look at common Spanish sayings that mention tongues.

Oftentimes, what we say isn’t exactly what we mean.

Read this article in Spanish

When you’re speaking in Spanish, sooner or later there will come a time when someone will tell you something serious or important that they don’t want you to tell anyone else. If someone says to you, “No te vayas de la lengua” (Don’t leave your tongue), they’re asking you not to tell anyone what they’ve told you.

I’ll give you an example.

One of your friends tells you that he’s going to give his mom the best present ever. He starts telling you every little detail about the gift and might even ask for your advice on how to buy it. At the end of the conversation, he says

• Y, por favor, no te vayas de la lengua

What does he mean by this? Simple: he’s asking you to keep this a secret so his mom doesn’t find out about the gift he is going to give her.

On the other hand, another expression with tongue is no tener pelos en la lengua (to not have hair on one’s tongue). This means the opposite of the previous expression.

If you meet someone who doesn’t have hair on their tongue it means they’re honest, direct, and will tell you what they think without sugarcoating it.

Here’s an example:

Two old friends run into each other on the street:

• Hey, how are you? Long time no see!
• Yeah, it’s been awhile! You look different.
• Different? Of course, we haven’t seen each other for a long time.
• No, no. You look older.

Even though the person really is older, the fact that their friend has been so direct in saying so means that the friend no tiene pelos en la lengua.

Now you have two new expressions to use when you speak in Spanish. If you want to learn even more, watch this video and write down all the sayings you haven’t heard before!

In Spanish there are hundreds upon hundreds of expressions about different topics, from food to love, the weather, friends…

There are lots of sayings about animals, but today we turn our focus to two very common expressions involving chickens.

Read this article in Spanish

We’ll learn what it means to be a chicken (ser una gallina) and also what it means to have the skin of a chicken (tener la piel de gallina).

If you’ve ever spent any time around chickens, you’ll know that it’s very hard to catch one. If you creep up silently it probably won’t do anything, but the moment it hears your footfall it will start running as fast as its little legs will carry it.

Chickens are so easily frightened that if they feel the slightest hint of fear or see something that scares them, they take off running as fast as they can.

That’s why in Spanish, since we like expressions so much, when a person is quick to fear or afraid of confronting a situation, we say that the person is a chicken (es una gallina).

In fact, having the skin of a chicken (tener la piel de gallina) is also related to fear. It may be an expression, but it’s also a scientifically proven fact.

When a person feels afraid, experiences a change in the temperature, or has a good feeling run through their body (for example, when listening to music), they get what we call goosebumps — or, in Spanish, chicken skin.

It’s a way for the body to protect itself from sudden external changes. Under the skin, there are muscles that tense up, raising each one of the hairs on the surface of the skin. At one time, this reaction helped protect the body from cold temperatures, and today it’s what makes our skin look like la piel de gallina.

Although chickens aren’t an animal most people feel a great affinity for, people and chickens have a lot in common. From now on, you know that if someone is scared to face a situation and wants to run away you can call them una gallina, and if their hair stands on end you know they have la piel de gallina.

If you want to learn even more sayings about animals, enjoy our video about expressions with animals.