My intensive spanish course doesn’t allow the use of English to help define Spanish words, so when we don’t know one, we have to explain its meaning in Spanish. It’s difficult at times… I’ll give you an example here. I’ll leave it alone for the hispanohablantes to figure it out, with English spoilers afterwards…
Today we were going over vocabulary for different body parts. The word caderas came up and most of the students didn’t know what it meant. It took me a minute and an example involving a dancing student and then I figured it out. Trying to define it to the class in Spanish, however, was near impossible, until it came to me:
“No mienten.”
About half the class figured it out just with that.
ENGLISH CLUE #1:
“No mienten” = They don’t lie.
ENGLISH CLUE #2 (for the truly hopeless)