güey
Spanish
Alternative forms
Etymology
Nonstandard pronunciation-spelling variant of buey (literally “ox”) (see that entry for more); this form thus represents a deshifting of /bw/ back to /ɡw/. Compare nonstandard güeno from bueno (“good”), agüelo from abuelo (“grandfather”), güelvo from vuelvo (“to return”), where /bwe/ becomes /ɡwe/. A similar phenomenon occurs in the dialectal pronunciation of Lithuanian buvai as /ɡwuei/.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): (spelling pronunciation) /ˈɡwei/ [ˈɡwei̯]
- Syllabification: güey
- IPA(key): (colloquial) /ˈw̝ei/ [ˈw̝ei̯]
- Rhymes: -ei
Noun
güey m (plural güeyes)
- (Mexico, colloquial slang) chump, punk, dumbass, idiot, jerk
- (Mexico, colloquial slang) dude, guy, buddy
- Synonyms: (Mexico) carnal, (Mexico) cuate, (Spain) tío, (Spain) tía; see also Thesaurus:tío
- (Rioplatense, Paraguay) pronunciation spelling of buey
See also
Further reading
- “güey”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024