Spanish · Exclamations (You Dropped Your Phone)
¡Joder!
hoh-DEHR · /xo.ˈðeɾ/
Fuck! / damn it! (the Spain default)
coarse but friendly; fine among acquaintances
Literally
"To fuck / to screw"
Word-for-word — which is rarely what it means.
How to use it
Spain's all-purpose curse — the "fuck" you'll hear every ten minutes in Madrid, but as an interjection it's more like a well-worn "damn." "No jodas" = "no way / stop messing with me"; "estar jodido" = to be screwed. Barely used as an exclamation in Mexico, where the same energy goes to "chingar." Coarse but ordinary in Spain.
Heard in the wild
¡Joder, se me ha caído el móvil!
Damn it, I dropped my phone!
Where it lands
Spain (ubiquitous); rare as interjection in Mexico
Quick answers
- What does "¡Joder!" mean?
- In Spanish, "¡Joder!" means "Fuck! / damn it! (the Spain default)". Literally it's "To fuck / to screw". Spain's all-purpose curse — the "fuck" you'll hear every ten minutes in Madrid, but as an interjection it's more like a well-worn "damn." "No jodas" = "no way / stop messing with me"; "estar jodido" = to be screwed. Barely used as an exclamation in Mexico, where the same energy goes to "chingar." Coarse but ordinary in Spain.
- Is "¡Joder!" offensive?
- It's on the mild end — 2/5 (Bar-safe) on the Punch-o-Meter. coarse but friendly; fine among acquaintances.
- How do you pronounce "¡Joder!"?
- Say it "hoh-DEHR" — capitals mark the stressed syllable. In IPA: xo.ˈðeɾ.
Related in Spanish
The same idea, elsewhere
Via concepts like "Damn".
- French Putain ! Damn! / F***! / The all-purpose intensifier — punctuation, really
- German Scheiße! Shit! / Damn! — the all-purpose German expletive
- Greek γαμώτο Damn it! / Dammit!
- Italian Cazzo! Fuck! / Damn! / The all-purpose Italian curse.
- Japanese くそ Damn! / Crap! / Shit!
- Korean 씨발 Fuck / fucking hell — the load-bearing Korean curse.
- Polish kurwa Fuck / damn / shit — the load-bearing word of Polish, and its most common comma.
- Portuguese Porra! Damn! / Fuck! — but mostly used as pure punctuation
Reviewed by native speakers. Rate it differently? Tell us what we got wrong.