anoche last night. From Latin ad noctem (literally “to night”), meaning “at night”, referring to the time between yesterday’s sunset and this morning’s sunrise. Technically, English last night ends at midnight, but Spanish anoche includes the following early morning time because it literally means “to / at night” with no sense of “last”.
anteojos glasses, gafas, lentes. From ante- (“before”, “in front of”) + ojos (“eyes”). Note the meaning is very different from antojo (“whim”, “craving”). To remember which is which, as a mnemonic, consider that ante- fully spelled out literally refers to a concrete object while ant- refers to an abstract concept.
botella bottle (cognate). Note it’s letter l, not t, that is doubled. Example, una bottela de agua (“a bottle of water”; “a water bottle”; which of the two meanings to take depends on the context); cuello de botella (“bottleneck”).
cometa kite; comet (cognate). It’s rare for a word to be of different origin in each Romance language, and one example is the word for “kite” (not “comet”, which does have the same origin in various Romance languages). For example, in Spanish, a kite is likened to a comet; in French, a flying stag or male deer; in Italian, a big eagle; in Portuguese, a parrot or cask (wooden barrel). The Spanish analogy between a kite and a comet is quite appropriate, but note the genders: la cometa for “kite” and el cometa for “comet”. (As a mnemonic, imagine a girl flying a kite and a boy watching the comet with a telescope.) Not to be confused with comité (“committee”), cometer (“to commit”).
conforme (followed by a) according to, in accordance with, de acuerdo (a); while, as; comfortable, agreed, happy. The first two meanings are more common. While cognate with English conform, it’s better to use cumplir to express “to conform” in the sense of “to comply”. Examples, conforme a las reglas (“according to / in accordance with the rules”, según las reglas); conforme lo vi (“as I saw it”); conforme crece la economía, también ... (“as economy grows, so does ...”); conforme se acerca el día de las elecciones (“as the election day approaches”).
corral pen, animal enclosure, barnyard, farmyard. This word has entered English vocabulary. Cognate with courier, current. From Latin currus (“chariot”). Huevos / pollos de corral in Spanish is often translated as “free-range eggs / chicken”, which may sound counter-intuitive. In practice, a “free” range almost always has to be within an enclosure, in which farm animals can freely run, unlike those in a crowded industrialized cage. So the word is connected to run. Not to be confused with coral. But if you like an absurd image, as a mnemonic, imagine a chicken pen built on a coral island.
desgracia misfortune, bad luck, mishap; disgrace (cognate). Note the first meaning, which is more frequent than “disgrace”. Examples, por desgracia (“unfortunately”, desafortunadamente, which is not as frequenly used according to Google Ngram); ¡qué desgracia! (“what a shame / pity!”, ¡qué lástima!; the English expression what a shame! is about an unfortunate event, not a shameful situation, to which Spanish ¡qué vergüenza! would be applicable).
efectivo (n.) cash; (adj.) effective, actual. Note the meaning when used as a noun. Imagine using cash is, or rather was, effective in transactions. Arthur L. Campa in “Anglo vs. Chicano: Why?” held a curious view that Spaniards tried to circumvent materialistic concepts and so avoided calling cash directly.
ensayo essay (“literary composition”) (cognate); try, attempt, test, assay (cognate); rehearsal. The English word essay no longer has the meaning of “attempt” or “test” when it was borrowed from Middle French as the French thinker Michel de Montaigne wrote his Essais (meaning literally “experiment”, “attempt”), which made essai a general word referring to the genre of literary writing. The English doublet assay still means “test”, specifically, “testing of chemical composition”.
espalda back (of human body). Cognate with spatula (a kitchen utensil or a lab tool, whose flat surface is like that of the back). Remember e- is prepended to a Spanish word beginning with s followed by another consonant. Doublet with espada (“sword”). Examples, tener dolor de espalda (“to have back pain”); dar la espalda (“to turn one’s back”, “to refuse to help”; note the meaning is not “to give backup or support”). See also espada.
expediente document, record, file, dossier, certificate. This word, often seen in legal context, is a false friend of English expedient, in spite of cognation. Imagine such paper work is urgently needed and must be expedited in delivery.
heroína heroin; heroine. As in most other Romance languages, this word can mean either “heroin” or “heroine” depending on the context. English speakers are lucky to have two separate words but in reading Spanish, we should be careful.
honra honor (cognate), honor. honrar to honor (cognate). honrado honest; honored. honradez honesty (cognate). honesto honorable, virtuous. From Latin honorare. Spanish dropped the second syllable vowel while English honor cut short after the second syllable. Note that honrado has the additional meaning of “honest”, honradez only means “honesty”, not “honor”, and honesto does not mean “honest” in the sense of “not telling a lie on a specific matter”. Honor and honesty are two related human qualities in both Spanish and English. If it’s not easy to remember all the connotations at once, just remember these words could have either of the two senses and see which one fits better in actual reading or listening.
inversión investment; inversion. invertir to invest (money, time, etc.); to invert. The more common meaning is the first one, “investment”, “to invest”, which is a result of combining or confusing Latin invertere (“to invert”) with an unrelated Latin word investire (“to clothe”, “to cover”), which English invest came from. The latter entered Italian and somehow acquired the sense of “to place capital in”. Example, cartera de inversiones (“investment portfolio”).
lealtad loyalty (cognate), allegiance. leal loyal (cognate). From Latin legalis (“legal”). The intervocalic g between two vowels was dropped (as in Latin integer > Spanish entero, litigare > lidiar, regale > real). The English, in fact French, -oy- is from Latin -e-, a common change that happened in Old French (e.g. habere > avoir). The original meaning of the word is, said of a subject in the feudal system, “faithful in carrying out legal obligations”. This word is unrelated to leotard. But as a mnemonic, you can imagine a gymnast wearing a certain leotard is loyal to his/her club. The close synonym fiel (“faithful”) is more personal in meaning, used in the case of e.g. marriage, while leal is more general. Example, la lealtad de los perros a los humanos (“dogs’ loyalty to humans”).
marchar to go, to march (cognate); (reflexive) to leave. Note the meaning of the reflexive usage, just like irse (“to leave”). Normally the meaning of a verb used reflexively can be guessed (action to oneself, passive voice, or indefinite person like English one). But sometimes they acquire a new meaning that does not follow the said rules, as in the case of marcharse or irse.
medio (adj., adv., n.) half, middle; (n.) means, way; (pl.) news media. media (adj., n.) half, mean, average; (n.) sock, stocking, pantyhose. Cognate with mean, median. The adjective media is simply the fem. form of medio. As a noun, media only occurs in certain expressions (see Examples); the meaning of “sock, stocking” of media is because a sock covers half the leg. Note the adverb can only be medio, not media. Examples, media hora / libra (“half an hour / pound”; media is adj.); clase media (“middle class”); altura media (“average height”); la habitación está medio vacía (“the room is half empty”; medio is adv. so it does not change to media); en medio de la noche (“in the middle of night”; medio is n.; but in media noche, “midnight”, media is adj.); por medio de (“by means of”); son las tres y media (“it’s half past three”; media is n.); medio de comunicación (“news media”, note medio, not media, and it can be preceded by un).
mozo boy, young man. There are various etymological theories about this word, including one that connects it to muchacho (“boy”). Alternatively, we know that the Biblical name Moses, according to one theory, means “child of” in Egyptian (see Wikipedia for Moses and its reference that states “Moses is derived from the common element in names such as Thutmosis (‘Thoth created him’)...)”. For lack of definitive proof, we can at least take Moses as a mnemonic for mozo and imagine him as a young boy or young man. Or think of the young music genius Mozart as a mozo. (The feminine form moza means “girl” but is not as common.)
ocasionar to cause, causar, to bring about, to occasion. English occasion can indeed be used as a verb meaning “to cause”, “to induce”, but this usage is far rare compared to Spanish ocasionar, which in turn is less common and more formal than causar. Example, la mala gestión ocasiona un impacto económico (“poor management causes an economic impact”).
prórroga extension, deferment. Cognate with prorogue (“to discontinue”), which has an outdated sense of “to defer”. The pró- prefix means “forth”. Note the double r, so it’s pronounced as a trill instead of a tap or flap (like perro vs. pero). As a mnemonic, think of forward” (pro-) and rolling, so “roll forward”. Example, prorrogan suspensión de vuelos debido a el covid-19 (“they extend the suspension of flights due to Covid-19”).. See also rogar.
puntuación punctuation; score (given on an exam). Note the second meaning. As a mnemonic, imagine the teacher punctures holes on a card as a way to record the student’s score on the exam. Example, sacar buena puntuación (“to get a good score”).
soler to do often, to be accustomed to (doing something). Cognate with solace (“comfort”, “consolation”), with the root of insolent (“rude”, from Latin insolens, “unusual”). If you do something repeatedly or frequently, you can do it comfortably or in solace. The word is followed by a verb infinitive and the combination is translated as “often (action of the verb)”; this way of translation is like that of volver (“to do again”). Note the stem change in many forms of this word, e.g., suelo (not to be confused with suelo, “floor”), sueles, suele, solemos, soléis, suelen. The rule is that when there’s a stress on any syllable other than the first, the conjugated form begins with so-, otherwise sue-, which is the stressed form of so. Examples, él suele levantarse tarde (“he usually gets up late”); yo solía ir a la iglesia (“I used to go to church”; solía is imperfect first-person singular). See also insólito (“unusual”).
Suecia Sweden. sueco Swedish. Due to lack of d on the second syllable, it’s possible to mistake Suecia for Swiss (Spanish suizo) or Switzerland (Spanish Suiza). The hard d sound in Sweden was actually a softer ð back in the Old English ancestor of this word. (ð is the initial consonant of that.) In spite of lack of d in the second syllable, Suecia, the name for Sweden in Spanish has e instead of i as part of the vowel in this syllable (as in Portuguese, Italian, but not French). In contrast, the name for Switzerland (Suiza) uses i. This is easy to remember if you notice the English words begin with Swe (regardless the pronunciation) and Swi, respectively. See also suizo, Suiza.
suizo Swiss. Suiza Switzerland. Not to be confused with Suecia (“Sweden”), or Suez (a town in northeast Egypt and the name of the famous canal). Note the vowels i in Suiza and e in Suecia. To help remember it, note the English words begin with Swe (regardless the pronunciation) and Swi, respectively. See also Suecia.
temprano (adj., adv.) early. From Latin temporaneus (“timely”). Cognate with temporary and tempo. According to etimologias.dechile.net, the sense of “early” came from the Latin phrase primum tempus (literally “first time”), which referred to the time of early harvest of crops in spring before the more general harvest in the later season. Example, tarde o temprano (“sooner or later”; note the word order and no comparative, i.e. no más).
Appendix 1: Other basic Spanish words The following are basic Spanish words gathered from various sources not occurring in the first few thousand of the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy) frequency list.
§1a Selection from The Usborne First Thousand Words in Spanish. The words in this section are grouped by category. Within each category, the words are alphabetically sorted. Many basic words in their categories are omitted since they are already listed in the main body of this book. [Note: On this webpage, the sample words here are listed alphabetically.]
cartel poster (picture posted on the wall). Related to carta (“letter”), cognate with card. While English cartel (as in drug cartel) ultimately can be traced to the same origin, the meaning differs too much. Consider them false friends.
cremallera zipper. Cognate with cremaster (“muscle covering testis and spermatic cord”), through French and Latin from an Ancient Greek word meaning “to hang”. Use a mnemonic such as “The coroner pulled up the zipper of the bag that held the dead man and the body was cremated.”
grifo faucet, tap; griffin (cognate, “a mythical beast having the body of a lion and the wings and head of an eagle” according to Wiktionary). The turning handle of some faucets resemble the wings of a griffin.
guisante pea. From Latin pisum sapidum (literally “tasty pea”). English pea is from Latin pisum. If you already know guiso (“stew”), think of a stew of peas. Or use a mnemonic such as “Santa likes to eat gooey, thick soup made of peas” and think of “gooey for Santa” (but remember gui- in Spanish is actually pronounced like ghee /gi/). Peas are small so it’s easy to make thick soup. In Mexico, peas are called chícharos, cognate with the first element of chickpea.
loro parrot. From a native American language spoken in the Caribbean. Use a mnemonic such as “Laura has a parrot.” (If you have a friend named Lori or Laurie, that name can be used too.) Or imagine you say lo, and a parrot mimics the sound but says ro because he has difficulty distinguishing l and r, as people speaking certain languages do, notably Koreans and Japanese. Note a parrot is not a parakeet (periquito in Spanish), which would be smaller.
malabarista juggler. From Malabar (“a region in southwestern India”) + -ista (“person doing something”). It’s said that people in Malabar have the talent of juggling. It’s amazing that this skill is given a Spanish name related to a people of South Asia, probably through Persians. Use bad (mal) acrobat or bad (mala) barista as a mnemonic; a barista is a person preparing and serving coffee (think of bar + -ista). Note this word form can be for either gender in spite of the -a ending.
moqueta carpet. From French moquette, which has entered English. According to one theory, a moquette was originally the carpet in a mosque, which at least serves as a good mnemonic. Moqueta refers to the big carpet covering the whole or big area of floor, while alfombra covers a smaller area and may be translated as rug.
noria ferris wheel; water wheel. Arabic origin. Use a mnemonic such as “Riding a ferris wheel make me feel nausea.” This word has entered English meaning “water wheel”.
reno reindeer. Traced to Old Norse, cognate with the first element of reindeer. (Incidentally, the second element is not deer, but is from an Old Norse word meaning “animal”.) Not to be confused with English rhino (rinoceronte in Spanish), Spanish riñón (“kidney”).
tenedor fork. From tener (“to hold”) + -dor (suffix to form a noun). A fork can firmly holds something.
tiovivo merry-go-round, carousel, carrusel. Literally “uncle alive”, this word is used in Spain. Legend has it that in 1834, Esteban Fernández (Tío Esteban, “Uncle Esteban”), owner of a merry-go-round, died of cholera. When his funeral procession passed by his business, people heard him shout Estoy vivo (“I’m alive”), which sounded like el Tío Vivo. From then on, people called him and his merry-go-round tiovivo.