güey

Spanish

Alternative forms

• wey

Etymology

Nonstandard pronunciation-spelling variant of buey (literally “ox”) (see that entry for more); this form thus represents a deshifting of /bw/ back to /ɡw/. Compare nonstandard güeno from bueno (“good”), agüelo from abuelo (“grandfather”), güelvo from vuelvo (“to return”), where /bwe/ becomes /ɡwe/. A similar phenomenon occurs in the dialectal pronunciation of Lithuanian buvai as /ɡwuei/.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): (spelling pronunciation) /ˈɡwei/ [ˈɡwei̯]
  • Syllabification: güey
• IPA^(key): (colloquial) /ˈw̝ei/ [ˈw̝ei̯]
• Rhymes: -ei

Noun

güey m (plural güeyes)

1. (Mexico, colloquial slang) chump, punk, dumbass, idiot, jerk

   Synonyms: cabrón, tonto

2. (Mexico, colloquial slang) dude, guy, buddy

   Synonyms: (Mexico) carnal, (Mexico) cuate, (Spain) tío, (Spain) tía; see also Thesaurus:tío

3. (Rioplatense, Paraguay) Pronunciation spelling of buey.

Further reading

• “güey”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.7, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2023 November 28