Spanish is rich in paremias, phrases, proverbs, sayings and adages that have become popular in the colloquial use of the language to express a concept, advice or a moral thought. Almost everyone uses these types of phrases correctly, understanding the meaning, but at the same time unaware of their origin. As an example, this button: “Have guts.” What does the expression mean and where does it come from?
Surely many will answer the question above with the same equivalents for “guts” that the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) offers: “arrests”, “courage” and “audacity”. Thus, “having guts” for something is synonymous with having courage, a label that is attached to a brave person with the ability to face hostilities with determination.
More doubts arouse the origin of the expression. Gills is a word that is commonly associated with the gills of fish and that is why there are those who maintain that “having gills” has to do with the respiratory organ of some aquatic animals, since it allows them to survive underwater.
However, the origin of “having gills” seems to come not from the sea, but from the land. And it is that gall is also, as stated in the first meaning of the dictionary, a “round excrescence that forms in oak, cork oak and other trees and shrubs by the bite and infections by microorganisms”.
These tumor-like growths that appear on some trees resemble testicles in shape, which have traditionally been associated with bravery and daring. In this way, guts is a metaphor for masculine attributes and “to have guts” is a euphemism for the vulgarism “to have balls.”
In the sense of bravery, the Dictionary of euphemisms, by José Manuel Lechado García, adds other words in addition to guts as a synonym for cojones: arrestos, flats, borceguíes, noses, guts and kidneys.
The Dictionary of sayings and set phrases, by Alberto Buitrago, delves into the phrase in question, since in it the variants with other organs of the human body are added: “To have / throw (many) guts / (many) livers / kidneys / offal (a pair of) noses / balls / balls (with a pair of noses / balls / eggs / balls / kidneys)”. As the author explains, the ancients considered that in the livers (the liver) “resided some feelings, such as bitterness, anger and, sometimes even, strength and courage”, while the inclusion of kidneys is due more to rhymes with cojones
As with a good part of the colloquial phrases, the exact origin of “having guts” is unknown, although it is known that it has been with us for centuries. In fact, the term gallas as a synonym for testicles already appears in 1518 in the work La lozana andaluza, by Francisco Delicado, in whose Mamotreto XLV one can read:
SILVANO.- So, Mrs. Loçana, you shouldn’t miss eating without them, because yesterday, talking with a friend of mine, we talked about what you know, because I remembered when you broke the guts of me and how many of us were in the bank of ginoveses.
LOÇANA.- And if then the gills, now the gills. And hear me two reasons.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
