PELAGATOS AND OTHER SPANISH PUT-DOWNS
Because Spaniards at large can appear sometimes so full of themselves, so uppity, on their high horse, I tend to denigrate and disparage myself when I describe my personality. I am in all truthfulness a real run-of-the-mill, below-the-salt, scholar-in-the-making person, nothing more. The word I use, tongue in cheek, is "pelagatos". In less fortunate times, people were obliged to hunt stray cats for food but first, they had to skin them, "pelarlos"; this practice gives us the etymology of "pelagatos": a person who skins cats, a "cat skinner", or more broadly, a person of little significance. The DRAE defines it as: "persona insignificante o mediocre, sin posición social o económica" which fits me to a T. Synonyms like pelafustán (layabout, good-for-nothing), pelagallos (nobody), paria (pariah), and mindundi (nobody) enrich its meaning. Meanwhile, Collins Bilingual Dictionary translates pelagatos as 'nobody,' a reduction...