Usos de la palabra "madre" / Uses of the world "madre"

Every May 10th we celebrate Mother’s Day. It is a very important day all over América Latina and specially here,  in México.  As we refer to in our Spanish in Cabo Newsletter 2, on that day,  the whole family honor the mother or the mamá mexicana. You are going to see all Mexican restaurants full and you are going to listen The Mañanitas song being sung anywhere.

                                                                              Monumento a La Madre, México DF

However, in the language the word “madre” is used in many different ways and almost always implying something negative.

Let´s see what Joseph J Keenan in "Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish", University of Texas Press, (1994:130) says about the word Madre:

“The mother is the paragon of the Latin family and is supposedly held sacred by the Latin male (especially). To show their deep respect for motherhood, Latin males have taken to inventing an entire vocabulary based on insulting other people´s mother. In Mexican street slang, for example madre shows up in just about every phrase, and almost invariably and paradoxically refers to the worst of everything”.

Estoy hasta la madre means I am fed up.

Le voy a partir la madre means to beat the shit out of.
The only exception to this linguistic paradox seems to be a toda madre, which means “Great”, adds Kennan.

Beyond madre you are going to hear : desmadre, for example that something is a total mess.

 

You can see more about Tuco´s adventure at http://www.lasaventurasdetuco.com/2012/04/desmadre.html

Let´s see another -  Be careful or you can crash your car / Cuidado que puedes darte un madrazo.

Joseph Keenan recommends, just in case, to use mamá  instead of madre.