"NO SER DE RECIBO" - SPANISH CLICHÉ

    

    Spanish has a neat, flexible expression—(no) ser de recibo—used to say that something is (or is not) acceptable, reasonable, or admissible. In English, depending on context, it can be rendered as acceptable, normal, or, in the negative, beyond the pale, unacceptable, out of order, or not on.
    The phrase has been roaming freely through the language since at least the eighteenth century. Antonio de Ulloa was already using it in 1711, leaving it neatly packaged for later generations. Its official birth certificate was issued by the Real Academia Española in the Diccionario de autoridades of 1737, where it is defined as follows:
“Estar o ser de recibo. Phrase que vale tener algún género, todas las qualidades necessarias para admitirse, según ley o contrato.”
In other words, something that meets the required conditions to be accepted—legally, contractually, or by common agreement.
    For more than three centuries, the expression has remained alive and popular, cropping up in all kinds of contexts. Even pop culture has embraced it. The singer Alaska (Olvido Gara), commenting on record prices, once remarked that “it’s not de recibo to charge 21 euros for a CD that costs 3.” A sentiment many would agree translates easily into English as “that’s just not acceptable.”
Journalists are fond of it too. Luis María Anson writes: “Now that we know how the jury is appointed, it is not de recibo to maintain the formula.” Clear, sharp, and faintly judicial in tone.
    The phrase even lends itself to wordplay. A promotional poster from Banco Caixagalicia once read:
“Domicilia ya tus recibos y participa en el sorteo mensual de 100 recibos gratis. Porque pagar por ventanilla no es de recibo.”
    Here, recibo is exploited in both senses—bill and acceptability—a pun that English can only envy.
To round things off, the then newly appointed Minister of Culture, Carmen Calvo, declared in ABC (29 May 2004):
“I think it is not de recibo that such an important body of genuine cultural policy should exist—or should have existed—in that Ministry.”
    Few expressions manage to sound at once colloquial, institutional, and mildly indignant. (No) ser de recibo does exactly that—and has been doing so, without apology, for over three hundred years.

NB. See my Diccionario de clichés (El Serbal, 2008.)

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