Spanish Word of the Day Archive
Thursday April 17, 2008
víctima, noun:
victim; casualty
Some words in Spanish referring to males or females never change grammatical gender. One example is la víctima which stays feminine even though the victim is male. In other words, you cannot say el víctima.
La primera víctima fue su hijo.
The first victim was his son.
In the plural, víctimas refers to casualties of accidents or war:
No hay que lamentar víctimas del accidente.
There were no casualties in the accident.
Another feminine Spanish word which can refer to males in the same way is la estrella, star.
Antonio Banderas y otras estrellas del cine.
Antonio Banderas and other filmstars.
Content By
© HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2006. All rights reserved.