Lunfardo — The Tango Argot
The argot of the Río de la Plata — Buenos Aires and Montevideo — born from Italian and Spanish immigration and spread through tango lyrics. Features vesre (syllable reversal: café → feca). Drawn from the Academia Porteña del Lunfardo.
22 words
Money, cash, dough, the most common Lunfardo word for the folding stuff.
That heavy, can't-be-bothered laziness, from the Genoese fiacca.
Tango itself, spun through vesre: tan-go flipped into go-tan.
Fake, counterfeit or bogus, the porteno word for anything dodgy and not the real deal.
Smooth talk, sweet nothings or flat-out BS, depending on who's doing the talking.
Lunfardo for a woman or girlfriend, one of the most tango-soaked words in the porteno argot.
A total mess, a chaotic uproar, from an African word for a runaway-slave settlement.
A well-off, well-dressed man about town, the tango's classic flush gentleman.
Coffee, by way of vesre: cafe spun backwards into feca.
The police, or jail itself, a cornerstone of the tango underworld's vocabulary.
A petty criminal, crook or lowlife, a fixture of the tango underworld.
Clothing, your threads or good gear, with roots in a Quechua word.
A pickpocket, or the act of picking pockets, from the old porteno underworld.
Mature content — open to view.
The all-purpose 'hey' or 'mate' that's practically Argentina's national catchphrase.
A bachelor flat or little love-nest, immortalized in classic tango lyrics.
To eat, to chow down, with roots in French/Italian thieves' slang for the mouth.
Lunfardo for 'to work', lifted straight from Italian immigrants' lavorare.
The wife or missus, mujer flipped around by vesre into jermu.
Fool or idiot, but also the affectionate 'dude' that glues Argentine conversation together.
A kid, lad or young guy, one of the warmest words in the porteno vocabulary.
A con artist, bluffer or all-talk fraud, a beloved insult in porteno life.