B

baboso/a [m, f, adj] a skirt-chaser (also the same sense applied to women), lusty, crazy about (the opposite) sex. Lit. ‘drooly’.

bacán [m, adj] a person who lives or enjoys living a comfortable life and being served, without having to worry. Etymology unknown, maybe something to do with bacanal ‘wild party’, from Baco (the Roman god of wine).

bagarto [m] 1 alt. form of bagayo; 2 [rare] a burden, a problem left on one’s hands, used e. g. of hospital patients who are dumped in E. R. in a very bad condition.

bagayo [m] an ugly person (esp. used by men referring to women, no matter the grammatical gender, but also increasingly used by women towards men). Alt. form: bagarto. [John Cowan tells me that there's an American English slang equivalent, dog. Thanks, John!]

bajarse [ps-ref vt] to completely consume (a drink): Tu tío ya se bajó un vino y medio ‘Your uncle already had one and a half bottles of wine’.

bancar [v] 1 to support, to be supportive of, to help (lit. ‘to support financially’, from banco ‘bank’); also, by extension, to wait for, to to be there for; 2 bancarse [ps-ref] to stand, to tolerate, to put up with. Examples: Mis viejos me bancaron los estudios ‘My parents supported my studies’; Te banqué cuando necesitabas un amigo ‘I helped you when you needed a friend’; Bancáme un ratito acá ‘Wait for me here just a while’; Se bancó un montón de insultos ‘He stood up to a lot of insults’; Ya no te banco más ‘I don’t (won’t) support you anymore’ or ‘I can’t stand you anymore’.

barbaridad [f] 1 [negative sense] outrageous thing; esp. in the phrase ¡qué barbaridad! [interj]; 2 [appreciative] very good thing, well-done work, spectacular result; can be used as an adjective (quedó una barbaridad).

bárbaro/a [adj, interj] [appreciative] great, very good, spectacularly good; [no connotation] great, important, serious (as in a mess or disaster). (This word has undergone an important semantic change; as a result, the act of a bárbaro ‘barbarian’ is now called barbárico ‘barbaric’ instead of the ‘correct’ form bárbaro, to avoid confusion — the shortest form doesn’t sound appropriately solemn.)

basurear [vt] treat someone badly, esp. in a consistent fashion; forrear. Formed on basura ‘garbage’.

beso or its diminutive besito [m] lit. a kiss; in the game of truco, a deuce, which is signaled to one’s teammate(s) by ’sending a kiss’ with only a quick movement of the lips.

birra [f] [Italian, same origin as English beer] beer, a bottle of beer.

bolazo [m] exaggeration, obvious lie, bullshit (not interjectional); impossible or incredible activity pictured as real or possible (esp. in a movie or TV show). Etymology unknown; seems to be bol- ‘ball’ + the suffix -azo used for violent movements or blows. Example: “Misión Imposible” fue un bolazo (’Mission: Impossible was a…’)

bolonqui [m] syllable inversion of quilombo.

boludez [f] 1 a stupid thing, a foolish or rash action; 2 a simple matter that anyone can solve, a thing that is easy to figure out. Example: El examen fue una boludez ‘The test was a piece of cake’.

boludo/a [adj] [rude] 1 (of a person) stupid, annoyingly silly; clumsy; also used as an addressing term among friends; 2 (of a thing) simple, almost insultingly easy to solve. Can take the intensive prefix re-.

bombo [m] 1 lit. drum, bongo (see autobombo); 2 the swollen belly of a pregnant woman, showing her state; the fact of a woman being pregnant, esp. when unwanted or unexpected, whence dejar con el bombo ‘to impregnate a woman unwillingly, to leave a woman that has unwillingly become pregnant’.

bondi [m] [colloquial] bus (public urban transportation). I though this was probably from some sort of convoluted syllable inversion, assimilation and shortening of ómnibus (the proper word for ‘bus’), but a reader pointed out to me that trams in Rio de Janeiro are known as bondis. This word apparently comes from English bonds, which is how Rio’s tram service got built and paid (being one of the first in Latin America) by a British company.

bostero/a [m, f, adj] fan of the Buenos Aires-based football club Boca Juniors. From bosta ‘horse/cattle excrement’.

brasuca [m, f, adj] [derogatory or colloquial] Brazilian (of a person), a Brazilian person (esp. used for men).

brutal [adj, interj]: lit. brutal, terrible; [appreciative] awesome, terrific. Used almost exclusively by Susana Giménez (yuck!).

buenudo/a [m, f, adj] naive, easy to take advantage of, stupid, easy to deceive or convince. Etymology: a cross between bueno ‘good, nice’ and boludo.

buraco [m] [from Portuguese buraco and/ or Italian buracco] hole, orifice, esp. a large hole dug in the ground; a hole or mark made by a bullet or projectile; a perforating wound.