Spanish Word of the Day Archive
Saturday January 10, 2009

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bajo, preposition:
under; below; by

In earlier Words of the Day we’ve come across bajo as an adjective and an adverb, for example:

una silla muy baja
a very low chair

Bajo is one of those rare Spanish words which you can use in a third grammatical function, as a preposition. You can use it in certain phrases to describe the literal physical position of something:

Llevaba un libro bajo el brazo.
He was carrying a book under his arm.

Or less literally, especially when talking about temperatures below zero:

Estamos a 30 grados bajo cero.
It’s thirty degrees below zero.

You also often use bajo when talking about names and titles of people and things:

Lo conocí bajo otro nombre.
I knew him by a different name.

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