Anu is in Argentina so we'll be brushing up on his Spanish this week.

Today's AWAD, the first of five Spanish words this week, is "mano a mano":

mano a mano (MA-no a MA-no) plural manos a manos
adverb

In direct competition; head to head.

adjective

One-on-one; face-to-face.

noun

1. A bullfight where two matadors compete in turn, fighting several bulls.

2. A direct or face-to-face confrontation.

[From Spanish mano a mano, literally hand to hand.]

Ah Plu, you had to add that part about AWADtalk. Couldn't you stick to the part about words? I was going to add to the discussion of mano a mano but I can no longer do so.

BelMarduk makes her point. Why interrupt a good clean post about Awad words of-the-week with an editorial aside flapping Awad's dirty laundry?

Poor form, Plutarch, but it does serve to show that you are human.

I yield to the objectivity and wisdom of two high-minded, fair-minded people. I grant that both of you are more objective, and more wise, and more mature in this than I am.

Therefore, I will delete all reference to this forum from my post.

P.S. If either of you think I haven't gone far enuf in my deletions, please let me know onscreen or by PM. I am prepared to delete all of my comments and let others say what they have to say about Anu's AWAD without anything from me to discourage open and friendly discussion.

Come to think of it, I am not going to wait for your advice. I am going to delete it all on my own initiative. Thank you both for bringing me to my senses. :)

Hmmm. Methinks he doth accommodate too much... ?

Say Plutarch, you didn't perchance accidently run over a puppy dog on your way in to work this morning, did you?

Right or wrong, it's gone, themilum. I ain't King Kong. I'm as sick of all this feuding as everyone else is. It just isn't going to stop until someone calls it quits. It may just as well be me. :)

It just isn't going to stop until someone calls it quits. It may just as well be me.
[heavy sigh of relief] Thank you! [hug]

Thanks Plu. I really do appreciate you removing the AWADtalk stuff.

It is a shame you deleted the rest though...you make intersting points and I would have liked to discuss them.

What I thought when the word came up this morning was this...

Anu didn't include the meaning we have here for mano a mano - one which is specifically masculin. Mano a mano is used to mean "man to man." It is usually used when two guys have to talk about something serious and one of them will say, "let's talk mano a mano."

A good example is a dad having a conversation with his daughter's date right before the prom - a man to man talk about what is an acceptable end ot the evening.

Edit: oops, I forgot to add, it isn't only man to man, it implys that the men are discussion on an honourable level.

The original meaning of ‘mano a mano’ (hand to hand) is permanently ingrained in my mind. Whenever I hear people using it to mean ‘man to man’ I wonder if they also say ‘womano a womano’.

The bastardized forms of ‘mano a mano’ also conjure up some interesting pictures in my mind. For example, when a commentator for a bicycle race says something like ‘[RiderName] and [RiderName] are going at it mano a mano’, I envision two riders pedaling with their hands.

The ‘head to head’ meaning baffles me too, especially when a perfectly good ‘foreign’ phrase already exists for ‘head to head’ in ‘tête-à-tête’. Just as ‘vis-à-vis’ is a perfectly good ‘foreign’ phrase for ‘face to face’. I guess it’s really just the ‘a’ in the ‘[word] a [word]’ phrase that sells the tickets; fill in the meaning of the other words any way you want.

I don't think of 'tête-à-tête’ as the same as 'mano a mano.' 'Tête-à-tête’ seems to be more of a private discussion of personal matters whereas 'mano a mano' seems competitive in nature.

But maybe you weren't implying that the two were equivalents at all, dgeigh, and I just misread you.

But maybe you weren't implying that the two were equivalents at all

No, I wasn’t. I was poorly pointing out how the original meaning of ‘mano a mano’ has become bastardized with erroneous meanings that don’t exist, such as ‘head to head’.

When I hear ‘mano a mano’ defined as ‘head to head’ I think, well why not just say ‘head to head’? It has fewer syllables and it’s clearer. Or, if you must use a non-English phrase to mean ‘head to head’, say ‘tête-à-tête’. So what if it doesn’t have the same meaning as the bastardized meaning of ‘mano a mano’? You’re not really interested in meaning anyway, or you wouldn’t say ‘mano a mano’ to mean ‘head to head’.

But at the same time, when someone uses any non-English phrase in such a way, I realize it’s usually not the meaning of the non-English phrase that people are trying to get across. Instead, it’s the ‘cool-value’ they think they will garner by using it.

The current misused, ‘cool-value’, non-English word is ‘caveat’. It has become a regular buzzword among the corporate wanna-be, up-and-comers around my office. I half expect balloons to drop from the ceiling, confetti to be thrown, and hearty congratulations all ‘round whenever someone manages to work it into a conversation – bonus points if one can work it in during a meeting. Just today I heard a person say, “This solution comes with a caveat: it cannot …” Here, and in practically every other sentence I’ve heard ‘caveat’ used, the person used ‘caveat’ synonymously with the English word ‘warning’. The problem is that ‘caveat’ does not mean ‘warning’. The Latin word for warning is ‘monitus’ not ‘caveat’. (By the way, the English word ‘monster’ is derived from the same Latin word as ‘monitus’: ‘monere’ to warn, advise. If one thinks of a monster literally as a warning, monsters like Frankenstein’s monster and Godzilla make much more sense – just food for thought.) ‘Caveat’, of course, came into popular usage through the Latin phrase ‘Caveat emptor’, which, as I’m sure most of you know, means, ‘Let the buyer beware’. ‘Caveat’ means, ‘let him/her/it beware’, and ‘emptor’, of course, means ‘the buyer’. So, translated directly, the sentence I heard today would be: “This solution comes with a let him/her/it beware: it cannot …” Ok, so one can make the logical leap and figure out what the person meant, but if one means ‘warning’, and really feels the need to try to garner some cool-value by using a non-English word, then why not say ‘monitus’?

Of course, it just doesn’t do to wee on someone’s balloon and confetti party by pointing out that they used ‘caveat’ incorrectly. As I mentioned in another post, “Team players speak the [corporate] babble.”

>>>I don't think of 'tête-à-tête’ as the same as 'mano a mano.' 'Tête-à-tête’ seems to be more of a private discussion of personal matters whereas 'mano a mano' seems competitive in nature.

There is some measure of machismo involved when a guy says he wants to talk mano a mano.

There is some measure of machismo involved when a guy says he wants to talk mano a mano

Here I go again, thinking of ‘mano a mano’ in the literal sense. When I think of a guy wanting to talk ‘hand to hand’ with another guy, I think of something, well, less than macho. ‘Fight’ hand to hand, ok, but ‘talk’? Talk hand in hand (or 'vis-à-vis', or 'tête-à-tête'); fight hand to hand.

I've never used the expression and it's not common currency where I come from, but I've always understood it to mean go head to head in an aggressive manner. That may or may not include physicality.