Growing up, there was one specific word that just stuck with me, till this day it still does. I honestly use this word very frequently, which later on as I explain the meaning behind this word isn’t such a good thing. The word I am speaking about is “hueva”. You might be asking yourself, what does this word mean? Give it some thought. Sure, it may sound like the Spanish word “huevo” which stands for eggs in English, I can assure you it isn’t that. If you look up the word on google, you’ll see it stands for “roe”. In the Hispanic community we use this word whenever someone is feeling lethargic.
Tracing back the time I first encountered this word was actually a very enticing moment. It was a very dull day, perfect for what I had been doing. I remember playing my PlayStation 3, not a care in the world. When all of a sudden, I hear my name cry out loud, “BRIANNN” I pay no mind just focused in my own little world. My mom ended up coming into my room upset at the fact that I ignored her the first few times. She had asked me to do chores, I of course was too lazy to do anything and just wanted to be cooped up in my bed and ended up doing chores which only lead to more. For some reason after completing my chores I was energetic and motivated, I remember telling my mom how we still needed to go to the supermarket to go buy for tonight’s dinner. To my surprise she had forgotten about it and replied with the words, “ay tengo hueva”. I was dumbfounded by the words my mother muttered, not knowing what she said exactly, thinking it was a Spanish curse word.
I looked at her confused and asked her what exactly she said, the first thing that came into mind was “did she just say a curse word” and wondering if what she had said was intentional or not. My mother proceeds to say it again thinking I would get it the second time, but I couldn’t put it together. I looked around wondering if there were any eggs near because I thought that’s what she was talking about. After much thinking I finally understood what she meant. I was even more shocked to learn that she was too lazy to go out. I asked her where she learned that word or where it came from, funny enough she didn’t know and just told me she learned it from her parents back in Mexico. Later on, that day, my father came home from work, and I proceeded to ask if he had “hueva” to go to work. He laughed and bluntly said “always ahaha”. After that day whenever I was loafing around my father would say “Ven para que se te quite la hueva” (come so you can remove that laziness), and we’d go around the park or just walk around our neighborhood to get my head up.
I remember being all happy because the word itself sounded funny, so I was excited to use the word. Sometime in middle school I remember hearing that word again in my class by one of my friends and was surprised he had known it too. I asked him where he heard about that word, and he replied saying “ahaha my father says that word a lot”. At this point I came to the conclusion that there is probably a very large amount of people out there that know what “hueva” means and it excites me knowing there are always people out there who go and say “tengo hueva”, I find that very amusing. It isn’t so bad having “hueva” from time to time, everyone in this world can get lethargic, but having “hueva” too many times isn’t a good habit. As I am typing this, I ask you the reader if you’ve recently felt like you had “hueva”.
I find myself using “hueva” more frequently than before which I come to realize isn’t so good. Every Time I need to do something or am asked to go somewhere I reply with “tengo hueva”. I’ve been noticing that I am becoming more and more antisocial and just very lazy in general, passing time by playing games or just being on my phone which is very unhealthy for my mental and physical health. I began noticing this change in me when I started my second year in college. The workload overwhelmed me and so I began to erase things from my “schedule” which included things like, going to the gym, and hanging out with friends. Every week just became a boring cycle, class, homework, and work. I was just very “huevon” (an unenthusiastic person). Getting online for class, doing homework if there was any and if there wasn’t then just be cooped up in my room because there wasn’t enough time to hang out with my friends, and whenever there was time, it was just spent on school/homework. Being an engineering major really has pushed me a lot by focusing a lot on school which is a good thing but has also led me to develop bad habits which I am in the process of fixing.
Nonetheless, it is amazing that there are words in each community that take a word and change its meaning or just have a word that means a lot to that community. I am part of many communities; it was honestly difficult picking a specific word to write about. I was sitting in my chair and muttered the words, “agh tengo mucha hueva” (I am feeling lazy). I realized what I had said and thought, yeah that’s the perfect word to write about, and that’s how I ended choosing the word “hueva”. I was very curious as to where the word originated from and why many people in Mexico started to use this word more instead of others like “flojera” which also had the same meaning.
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