Hello,

How are you? I hope everything is going well on your side.

Today I’d like to tell you about a word I came across two weeks ago while I was reading a blog post: pordebajear. It was the first time I had seen that word and it turns out it is used in Colombia (colombianismo).

Can you guess its meaning?

According to the Diccionario de americanismos (Dictionary of Words in Spanish from the Americas) and the Breve diccionario de colombianismos (Brief Dictionary of Words from Colombia) it means “to look down on someone” or “to humiliate”, that is to make them feel bad.

Have you heard this word before? Can you think of a sentence where you could use it? Here’s my example:

No debes andar por ahí pordebajeando a las personas. (You shouldn’t go around looking down on people).

Let’s see this example from YouTube:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxQGzztAFXj-mN1SyqOCD8pFfczKtisUvr?si=uHfsJVH8vScWdsnG

In the clip the person says:

Que le parece inomodísimo que le hayan preguntado eso. Como si a un alcalde no le pudieran preguntar si está dispuesto a hacerse un examen antidoping. Entonces, el trata de pordebajear o minimizarle el estatus a ella.

In the last sentence the speaker gave us a synonim of pordebajear: minimizar (to minimize).

See you next time!

Crédito de la foto de portada | Photo credit: Waldemar en Unsplash