/saˈliɾ poɾ peteˈneɾas/ lit. ‘to go out by way of peteneras (a flamenco song)’
Spanish idiom, colloquial. To jump suddenly from one topic to a completely unrelated one.
Draft Not yet checked by a native Spanish speaker.
How do people use Salir por peteneras
?
Colloquial Spanish from Spain, and usually a complaint: you say it about someone else when their answer has nothing to do with what you were talking about. It’s often with “siempre” or in the past: “siempre sales por peteneras”, “le pregunté por el dinero y salió por peteneras”. There’s often a hint that the person did it on purpose to dodge the question.
Also said salirse por peteneras
Salir por peteneras
in real sentences
-
Nos fastidia mucho que siempre salgas por peteneras.
It really annoys us that you always go off on some unrelated tangent.
Tatoeba, sentence by Seael, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Salir por peteneras
come from?
A petenera is a style of flamenco song, and the Real Academia’s dictionary lists “salir, o salirse, por peteneras” as colloquial for doing or saying something out of place. How a song style got into the phrase isn’t recorded. The sociologist Amando de Miguel, in a 2009 column in Libertad Digital, tied it to a singer nicknamed La Petenera who would break into song rather than carry on a serious conversation, but that’s a story, and Wikipedia notes that even the origin of the song style itself is uncertain.
Mistakes learners make with Salir por peteneras
Reading “salir” literally. “Salió por peteneras” doesn’t mean someone left the room; it means they said something that came out of nowhere. And the peteneras are always plural.
Other Spanish idioms like Salir por peteneras
Spot a mistake in Salir por peteneras
?
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