"cuento chino" meaning in Spanish

See cuento chino in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: cuentos chinos [plural]
Etymology: Literally, “Chinese tale”. The origin of the expression is unclear, however, there are two possible folk etymologies: * From the book The Travels of Marco Polo by Italian explorer Marco Polo: Returning from China to Italy, the traveler told stories of mythological animals and incredible fables from such Asian region that were not very believable and unrealistic; therefore, many of these passages were classified as "a Chinese tale" to damage the credibility of these chronicles. * Another theory suggests it originates in 1847s Cuba, from the Chinese immigrants of the time. In order to continue having cheap labor, the Spanish colonists went to China and promised housing, clothes, work and food to those who would follow them to the Caribbean island. The work they promised was hard but, according to the contractors, well paid. However, they were deceived, victims of "a Chinese tale" that cost the lives of many immigrants who never found their way back. Etymology templates: {{m-g|Chinese tale}} “Chinese tale”, {{lit|Chinese tale}} Literally, “Chinese tale” Head templates: {{es-noun|m}} cuento chino m (plural cuentos chinos)
  1. tall tale Tags: masculine Categories (topical): Genres
    Sense id: en-cuento_chino-es-noun-BLnP5YD9 Disambiguation of Genres: 93 7 Categories (other): Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Spanish entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 83 17 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 90 10 Disambiguation of Spanish entries with incorrect language header: 94 6
  2. (idiomatic) baloney, bull, nonsense, hogwash Tags: idiomatic, masculine
    Sense id: en-cuento_chino-es-noun-RoNpoDFS

Inflected forms

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "Chinese tale"
      },
      "expansion": "“Chinese tale”",
      "name": "m-g"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "Chinese tale"
      },
      "expansion": "Literally, “Chinese tale”",
      "name": "lit"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Literally, “Chinese tale”. The origin of the expression is unclear, however, there are two possible folk etymologies:\n* From the book The Travels of Marco Polo by Italian explorer Marco Polo: Returning from China to Italy, the traveler told stories of mythological animals and incredible fables from such Asian region that were not very believable and unrealistic; therefore, many of these passages were classified as \"a Chinese tale\" to damage the credibility of these chronicles.\n* Another theory suggests it originates in 1847s Cuba, from the Chinese immigrants of the time. In order to continue having cheap labor, the Spanish colonists went to China and promised housing, clothes, work and food to those who would follow them to the Caribbean island. The work they promised was hard but, according to the contractors, well paid. However, they were deceived, victims of \"a Chinese tale\" that cost the lives of many immigrants who never found their way back.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "cuentos chinos",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "m"
      },
      "expansion": "cuento chino m (plural cuentos chinos)",
      "name": "es-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "Spanish",
  "lang_code": "es",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "83 17",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "90 10",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "94 6",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Spanish entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "93 7",
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "es",
          "name": "Genres",
          "orig": "es:Genres",
          "parents": [
            "Entertainment",
            "Culture",
            "Society",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "tall tale"
      ],
      "id": "en-cuento_chino-es-noun-BLnP5YD9",
      "links": [
        [
          "tall tale",
          "tall tale"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "glosses": [
        "baloney, bull, nonsense, hogwash"
      ],
      "id": "en-cuento_chino-es-noun-RoNpoDFS",
      "links": [
        [
          "baloney",
          "baloney"
        ],
        [
          "bull",
          "bull"
        ],
        [
          "nonsense",
          "nonsense"
        ],
        [
          "hogwash",
          "hogwash"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) baloney, bull, nonsense, hogwash"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "masculine"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "wikipedia": [
    "Marco Polo",
    "The Travels of Marco Polo"
  ],
  "word": "cuento chino"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "Pages with 1 entry",
    "Pages with entries",
    "Spanish countable nouns",
    "Spanish entries with incorrect language header",
    "Spanish lemmas",
    "Spanish masculine nouns",
    "Spanish multiword terms",
    "Spanish nouns",
    "es:Genres"
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "Chinese tale"
      },
      "expansion": "“Chinese tale”",
      "name": "m-g"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "Chinese tale"
      },
      "expansion": "Literally, “Chinese tale”",
      "name": "lit"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Literally, “Chinese tale”. The origin of the expression is unclear, however, there are two possible folk etymologies:\n* From the book The Travels of Marco Polo by Italian explorer Marco Polo: Returning from China to Italy, the traveler told stories of mythological animals and incredible fables from such Asian region that were not very believable and unrealistic; therefore, many of these passages were classified as \"a Chinese tale\" to damage the credibility of these chronicles.\n* Another theory suggests it originates in 1847s Cuba, from the Chinese immigrants of the time. In order to continue having cheap labor, the Spanish colonists went to China and promised housing, clothes, work and food to those who would follow them to the Caribbean island. The work they promised was hard but, according to the contractors, well paid. However, they were deceived, victims of \"a Chinese tale\" that cost the lives of many immigrants who never found their way back.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "cuentos chinos",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "m"
      },
      "expansion": "cuento chino m (plural cuentos chinos)",
      "name": "es-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "Spanish",
  "lang_code": "es",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "glosses": [
        "tall tale"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "tall tale",
          "tall tale"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "Spanish idioms"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "baloney, bull, nonsense, hogwash"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "baloney",
          "baloney"
        ],
        [
          "bull",
          "bull"
        ],
        [
          "nonsense",
          "nonsense"
        ],
        [
          "hogwash",
          "hogwash"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) baloney, bull, nonsense, hogwash"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "masculine"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "wikipedia": [
    "Marco Polo",
    "The Travels of Marco Polo"
  ],
  "word": "cuento chino"
}

Download raw JSONL data for cuento chino meaning in Spanish (2.1kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable Spanish dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-20 using wiktextract (05fdf6b and 9dbd323). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.