You could be out on vacation shopping for some items of clothing in a Spanish-speaking country or perhaps you just want to flaunt your Spanish to a bunch of native speakers. No matter what your motivation, learning to name what you wear everyday in Spanish is a cool skill to have. And, if you know the right way to learn, it should take you no more than a few minutes to conquer them all and reproduce them “on the fly” without having to fiddle with mental translations. If cramming up words after words is your forte, we’d recommend saving that skill for something harder as this one calls for hardly any efforts on your part!
Learning the Spanish for your wardrobe is easy and important
Photo credit: Dan licensed CC BY-ND 2.0
Spanish above the waist
Blouse (blusa) – This one shouldn’t take much explaining or efforts as the words sound almost identical.
Shirt (camisa) – Just think of La Camisa Negra (The Black Shirt), the ridiculously popular hit by Juanes and you should have no problem recalling this one. Your shirt could be with short sleeves (con mangas cortas) or with long (con mangas largas).
Dress (vestido) – Use a simple visualization trick to remember this word. Imagine a girl on her wedding day. Imagine her wearing that prohibitively expensive dress in which she had invested months of her salary before saying, “I do!” Easy? The Venezuelans use the word, flux colloquially while in Peru, the word is terno.
T-shirt (playera) – Well, the easiest way to remember this one is to imagine those players wearing colorful t-shirts. The ones with long sleeves are called jerseys (don’t forget to say it using the Spanish pronunciation). Some speakers also use the word, camiseta, noting the similarity between a shirt and a t-shirt.
Little Mexican girls in colorful faldas
Photo credit: Frank_am_Main licensed CC BY-SA 2.0
Spanish below the waist
Jeans (vaqueros) – The standard Peninsular usage is vaqueros. Cows are vacas in Spanish and the ones herding them are, thus, vaqueros. And it’s them vaqueros who started wearing jeans first, the name stuck. In the north-eastern parts of Spain, they are also called tejanos. Puerto Ricans call them mahones while the Cubans, pitusas. Then again, there’s pantalones de mezclilla (denim pants) in Mexico. Nevertheless, the most commonly used word in all these countries remains what you already know and use, “jeans.”
Pants/trousers (pantalones) – Pants came from pantaloons in English and it’s easy to see how they seem to be closely related to their Spanish counterpart.
Shorts (pantalones cortos) – In simplest terms, these are your short pants and the Spanish for short is corto.
Skirt (falda) – Imagine this item as one that the girl folds or wraps around her waist and you will remember falda. Another visual cue could be imagining it as a piece of clothing that hangs or falls from the waist covering the lower parts of the girl’s body.
Sombreros and vaqueros
Photo credit: Corin Royal Drummond licensed CC BY-SA 2.0
Some accessories in Spanish
Belt (cinturón) – The Spanish for waist is cintura and hence the item that goes on there derives as cinturón.
Bow-tie (pajarita) – Pajaro is the Spanish for bird; so, its diminutive is naturally a pajarita, a little bird. Someone, someplace must have felt exceptionally romantic to have seen a bow-tie as a little birdie perched on some man’s collar. In Chile, they call it humita.
Cap (gorra) – A gorra is a cap con visera (with a visor), such as a baseball cap. However, if your cap doesn’t have the peak, as in a skullcap, it’s a gorro. Think of gorro as something that would go around (as in over) your head. As for the gorro-gorra distinction, just remember that “gorro means no peak,” and you should do well.
Gloves (guantes) – Imagine feeling terribly cold, so cold that your fingers are going numb! What do you want desperately? Los guantes! Just remember this imagery and the contextual rhyme between “want” and guante.
Hat (sombrero) – Almost all of us have grown up watching those spaghetti westerns with cowboys wearing cool sombreros doing cool things with their guns. Clint Eastwood, anyone?
Purse (bolso) – Medieval Latin had a word for leather, bursa. Since this item was used to make “money-bags” those days (it is even today), the word also came to be used for those bags. Eventually, English switched the “p” with “b” and inherited the word as “purse.” Someplace else, someone switched the “r” with “l” and morphed it into bolsa when Spanish was born. So, bolsa is essentially a bag (more akin to a paper bag or the likes) while its masculine form, bolso is a purse or a handbag. So, how do you remember it’s bolso and not bolsa when referring to a lady’s purse? Simple, just remember that it’s the male that pairs with the female, i.e., the male bolso goes with the lady as her purse! Nowadays, however, at least in Mexico they have started using bolsa to mean both.
Tie (corbata) – There’s a slightly bizarre visual cue that could help you remember this word. Think of a someone wearing a menacing black cobra around his neck for a tie. Think of the Hindu pantheon’s pothead, Shiva, who wears a venomous cobra around his neck all the time.
Wallet (cartera) – The word, “card,” rhymes with carta, so you can visualize a wallet full of all sorts of cards (credit, debit, loyalty, etc.) to remember what a cartera is. Another word for wallet is billetera; think of it as something that holds your crisp, green bills. Billetera is the preferred word in Colombia, Argentina, and Chile when talking about a man’s wallet while cartera is used for a woman’s bolso. Spaniards use cartera for a wallet, bolso for a handbag, and monedero for a purse. Think of monedero as a container for your moneda (money). Incidentally, a carterista is a pickpocket in the Spanish-speaking world.
Spanish for your footwear
Boots (botas) – The two words are too identical to be any trouble remembering.
Shoe (zapato) – Imagine zapping a toe of the girl standing next to you in that crowded bus with your new shoes.
Slipper (zapatilla) – This one’s obviously derived from zapato; so, if you remember the latter, you should easily remember zapatilla as well.
Sock (calcetín) – If you know that calzón is the Spanish for underwear, you can picture calcetín as being an “underwear” for your feet!
Stocking (media) – Think of a stocking as the tight-fitting sheer that covers about half of a woman’s leg; this idea of covering “half” of her legs should help you remember its Spanish translation since the word comes from the Latin medius which means “half” or “middle.”
Spanish underneath your clothes
Boxers (calzón) – Picture yourself taking in the California Sun at the Santa Monica beach wearing a pair of boxer shorts and a lot of sunscreen. Just be careful while using it because in some countries, calzón also stands for the female underwear!
Bra (sujetador) – The Latin verb, subjectare, morphed into the English verb “to subject,” and the Spanish, sujetar. In a sense, subjecting something also carries the meaning of subjugating or holding it. So, a sujetador is just something that holds those breasts. There are many other words for this item depending on where you are. While most Spaniards use sujetador, many also use bajera. Ecuadorians and Venezuelans go for sostén, while Paraguayans use corpí or corpiño. And then you have the El Salvadorans who pretty much use just the English word instead.
Briefs/underpants (calzoncillos) – The diminutive “-illo” suffix should easily tell you that this is a much smaller version of calzones (boxer shorts), ergo, briefs.
Nightdress (camisón) – Remember the word, “camisole”? They mean the same thing and perhaps share a common ancestry too.
Panties (bragas) – This word derives from the Latin, braca, which means buttocks in an allusion to the “break” or “split” in one’s derriere. So, the bragas of Spanish are the piece of clothing meant to cover that “crack” in the woman’s butt. Sounds crude but that’s etymology for you!
Undershirt (camiseta) – While it can also mean a t-shirt, camiseta is generally used for what the Americans call a “vest.”
There you are...27 items from your closet that you can name in Spanish with hardly any efforts from now on! There are many other items of clothing that are not included in the list above but are equally important to know. If you have anything interesting on them, feel free to share it with the rest.