güey
Spanish
Alternative forms
- wey
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 pronunciation) /ˈw̝ei/ [ˈw̝ei̯]
- Rhymes: -ei
Noun
güey m or f (plural güeyes)
- (Mexico, colloquial slang) chump, punk, dumbass, idiot, jerk
- Synonyms: cabrón, tonto
- (Mexico, colloquial slang) dude, guy, buddy
- Synonyms: (Mexico) carnal, (Mexico) cuate, (Spain) tío, (Spain) tía; see also Thesaurus:tío
Further reading
- “güey”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014