/me imˌpoɾta um peˈpino/ lit. ‘it matters a cucumber to me’
Spanish idiom, colloquial. To not care about something at all.
Draft Not yet checked by a native Spanish speaker.
How do people use Me importa un pepino
?
Colloquial but clean, so you can say it to friends, family or a coworker you get along with. The verb works like gustar: the thing you don’t care about is the subject and you’re the indirect object, so “me importa un pepino”, “le importa un pepino”, and with a plural thing “tus planes me importan un pepino”. A “no” in front (“no me importa un pepino”) means exactly the same.
Also said importar un pepino
Me importa un pepino
in real sentences
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Me importa un pepino.
I couldn’t give a monkey’s.
Tatoeba, sentence by frpzzd, translation by sundown, CC BY 2.0 FR
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La Bolsa me importa un pepino.
I don’t give a damn about the stock market!
Tatoeba, sentence by fran_trujillo, translation by Clavain, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Me importa un pepino
come from?
Nobody has pinned down a first use. Spanish Wiktionary gives “pepino” a figurative sense of something worthless and quotes it from El Mundo in 2007, and the phrase belongs to a whole family where a cheap plant stands for nothing at all: a cumin seed (comino) or a weed (bledo, pigweed). English Wiktionary lists it as a synonym of “importar un huevo”.
Mistakes learners make with Me importa un pepino
Using “yo” as the subject. “Yo importo un pepino” means “I matter a cucumber”, which is a sad thing to say about yourself; the speaker goes in as “me” and the thing you don’t care about takes the verb.
Other Spanish idioms like Me importa un pepino
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