comerse un rosco
Meaning: To fail completely or strike out; to get nothing at all in a romantic or competitive context.
Language: Spanish
Literally: to eat a ring-shaped pastry
Category: Food & Drink
Origin: Traces to the traditional festivities of Madrid's San Isidro holiday in mid-May, where offering a rosquilla (a small ring-shaped pastry) to someone you wanted to dance with was a common, low-stakes way of showing romantic interest — accepting it was a good sign, and going home from the fair without having given or received one meant the evening's romantic prospects had come to nothing. A secondary, less certain theory reaches for bullfighting slang, where failing to "eat a rosca" meant a bullfighter's career failing to take off. Either way, "no comerse una rosca" settled into general use for any kind of failure, romantic or otherwise, and wasn't formally added to the Real Academia Española's dictionary until 1992, despite circulating in speech well before that.
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More Spanish idioms
- estar más claro que el agua — Something is obvious, evident, and beyond any doubt or confusion.
- tener un rabo de paja — To feel guilty or anxious about something, fearing exposure of a personal fault or secret.
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- Costar un ojo de la cara — To be outrageously expensive.
- No hay tu tía — There's no way around it; nothing can be done.
- Estar de Rodríguez — To be a husband left working in town while the family is on holiday.
From our false friends
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