Body parts
This week’s lesson is about parts of the body – but before you get too excited, it’s actually about verbs that are connected to parts of the body. I will explain. For example, the word for “arm” in Spanish is “brazo”. There is a verb in Spanish connected to this which describes what you do with your “brazos” from time to time – that is “abrazar” which means to “embrace”.
There are quite a few of these, so let’s see what else we can come up with. The word for “eye” is “ojo”. In English we sometimes say “to cast an eye over”, well in Spanish this is “ojear”. This can be confused with “hojear” which specifically means to browse through a book or magazine. Here is another one – the word for back, which is “espalda”. Well “to back” something in Spanish, in the sense of to support something, is “respaldar”.
Before I go any further I would like to point outside something interesting about English here. We very often use exactly the same word for the verb as for the noun. For example, we have the noun: “eye” and also the verb “to eye” something. We say “the back” and also “to back”. We can say “to arm” as well, but this has a completely different meaning. Confusing eh?
The “forehead” in Spanish is “la frente”. From this we have the verb “enfrentar” which means “to face” (there we are again in English – “the face”, “to face”) or “to confront”. The preposition “enfrente” comes from the same root. It means “opposite” that is “facing”. The word for “knee” in Spanish is “rodilla”, and “to kneel” is “arrodillarse”. Notice this time in English we say “to kneel” and not “to knee” which also exists but means something completely different and not something one would expect to do in church.
Going back to the eye for a moment, the word for “eyelash” in Spanish is “pestaña”, whilst “pestañear” means “to blink”. There’s some logic there, but it is not to be confused with “párpado” which is “eyelid” and “parpadear” which is “to blink” in the sense of “to flicker”. This is the verb you use when you phone the technical people to tell them your Internet connection has gone off. It’s when you have that interesting conversation with them about the little lights on your modem or router or whatever it is. You kneel on the floor with your head under the desk, breathing in dust and saying “Ahora está parpadeando” (Now it’s flickering.”) Don’t tell me you haven’t been there.
I imagine that many of you will have come across “sangre” meaning “blood”, especially as our doctors are very keen on sending us off for “un análisis de sangre”. Well, we have a verb from this as well which is “sangrar”. In English we don’t say “to blood” though, we say “to bleed”. Rather confusingly “desangrar” also means “to bleed”, but that’s when you lose all your blood, apparently.
I can’t resist finishing off with some more English peculiarities. We “toe” the line and “foot” the bill. We can “head” a ball and “elbow” someone in the ribs. In fact, we can also “rib” somebody, “finger” things and “thumb” a lift. We might “nose” around someone’s house, and didn’t we use to “neck” sometime in the past? So, now you have some more things to think about before next week!