Morriña and 10 Untranslatable Spanish Words, Measured
Updated September 3, 2026 · Reviewed by the Audaz editorial team
Morriña is the Galician word for the ache of being away from home, and it heads almost every list of untranslatable Spanish words. Two dictionaries and one book corpus say the label is wrong. The Spanish dictionary gives morriña seven synonyms. The Galician dictionary lists it as three separate words, and only one of its five senses is the feeling. We then measured the ten words in our own untranslatable list. The nine we can measure cleanly differ by 709 times in how often you will actually meet them on a page.
- The Real Academia Española lists seven Spanish synonyms for morriña. A word with seven synonyms is not untranslatable.
- In the Real Academia Galega dictionary, morriña is three separate entries with five senses. One is homesickness. The others are drizzle, dead plants, grime and a rotting body.
- Across our own list of ten, madrugada is 709 times commoner in books than empalagar.
- Three of the ten are worth studying as vocabulary. The rest are worth knowing as culture.
- Frequency is not importance. It only tells you what you will meet.
We published a list of ten untranslatable Spanish words. It is one of the most read pieces on this site. This is the follow-up, and it is partly an argument with ourselves.
The untranslatable-words genre has a flaw. It presents every word as equally magical and equally worth your time. For a reader, that is the one thing that matters and the one thing nobody measures. So we measured it.
What does morriña actually mean in Galician?
Morriña is Galician before it is Spanish. So we went to the Real Academia Galega, the body that defines the Galician language, rather than to a travel blog.
Their dictionary does not have one entry for morriña. It has three, and they are unrelated words that happen to be spelled the same. Between them they hold five senses. The famous one is a single sense of the first entry.
| Entry | Sense | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| morriña1 | 1 of 1 | The famous one. Sentimento e estado de ánimo melancólico e depresivo, en particular o causado pola nostalxia da terra. A melancholy, low state of mind, especially the kind caused by missing your land. |
| morriña2 | 1 of 2 | Corpo morto en estado de descomposición. A dead body that is rotting. The dictionary’s own example is Moito fede a morriña, that reeks of morriña. |
| morriña2 | 2 of 2 | Capa de sucidade que se forma sobre algo debido á falta de hixiene. The layer of grime that builds on something nobody washes. |
| morriña3 | 1 of 2 | Drizzle. The fine Galician rain. Parece que non, pero a morriña aínda molla ben, it does not look like much, but morriña still soaks you. |
| morriña3 | 2 of 2 | Conxunto de restos vexetais, como herba, fento, toxo, ramallos. A heap of dead plant matter you can start a fire with. |
The word sold as the untranslatable soul of Galicia is, in Galicia’s own dictionary, one sense out of five. The other four are a rotting corpse, a layer of filth, drizzle, and a pile of dead bracken.
None of that makes the feeling less real. Galicians do use morriña for homesickness, and the first entry records exactly that. It does mean the poetry belongs to the speakers, not to the dictionary.
Does the Spanish dictionary treat morriña as untranslatable?
Spanish borrowed the word. The Real Academia Española dictionary carries it with two senses. Sense one is the feeling, marked coloq. for colloquial. Sense two is a livestock disease.
Then the entry does something that quietly ends the argument. It lists synonyms.
The seven are nostalgia, añoranza, tristeza, pena, melancolía, musepo and melarchía. A dictionary that can name seven synonyms has already translated the word. It just translated it into Spanish.
Two of those synonyms, musepo and melarchía, are obscure enough that most Spanish speakers would not recognise them. The untranslatable word has rarer synonyms than itself.
How often will you actually meet these words in a book?
This is the question a reading guide should ask. We took the ten words from our own untranslatable list and looked up how often each appears in Spanish-language books.
The source is the Google Books Spanish corpus. We took the average yearly frequency from 2000 to 2019, with no smoothing, and we express it as appearances per million words. Every figure below is from that one method, so the words are compared like for like.
| Word | Per million words | What our list said it means |
|---|---|---|
| puente | 22.953 | A long weekend bridged onto a public holiday |
| madrugada | 12.053 | The hours after midnight, before dawn |
| sobremesa | 1.196 | The talk that keeps you at the table after eating |
| estrenar | 1.066 | To use or wear something for the very first time |
| merendar | 0.571 | To have the late-afternoon snack |
| tocayo | 0.269 | Someone who shares your first name |
| vergüenza ajena | 0.174 | Embarrassment felt on someone else’s behalf |
| trasnochar | 0.121 | To stay up through the night |
| friolero | 0.033 | A person who is always cold |
| empalagar | 0.017 | When sweetness tips over into too much |
Puente sits at the top and has to be set aside. It mostly means a bridge, the thing over a river, so its number is not measuring the long-weekend sense. That leaves madrugada as the honest leader.
Madrugada is 709 times commoner in Spanish books than empalagar. Our list gave them the same amount of space and the same promise.
Why does a 709 times gap change how you study?
Because your reading time is finite and the words are not interchangeable.
Madrugada will turn up in the first novel you open. It appears about ten times as often as sobremesa, and sobremesa is not rare. Learning madrugada pays you back on page one.
Empalagar is different. At 0.017 per million you could read for years and never meet it. That is not a reason to avoid the word. It is a reason to stop treating it as vocabulary homework.
Where does morriña land? At 0.115 per million it sits between friolero and trasnochar. Ordinary nostalgia is 77 times commoner, and plain miedo, fear, is 740 times commoner.
| Word | Per million words | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| miedo (fear) | 84.750 | You will meet this constantly. |
| ilusión (eager hope) | 17.545 | Common, and genuinely hard to translate. Learn it. |
| nostalgia | 8.772 | The everyday word for the feeling morriña is famous for. |
| añoranza | 1.667 | The literary one. Still about 15 times commoner than morriña. |
| saudade | 0.160 | Portuguese, and rarer in Spanish books than nostalgia by 55 times. |
| morriña | 0.115 | The famous one. The rarest word in this table. |
Ilusión is the word these lists should lead with and usually skip. It means an eager, forward-looking hope, and English has no clean single word for it. It is also 153 times commoner than morriña. That is the combination worth your time.
Which of the ten are worth learning as vocabulary?
Split the list in two. Study the ones you will meet. Enjoy the rest as culture, with no obligation to memorise them.
| Word | Per million | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| madrugada | 12.053 | Study it. You will meet it in your first book. |
| sobremesa | 1.196 | Study it. Common enough to earn a slot, and the culture is worth the detour. |
| estrenar | 1.066 | Study it. Everyday, and there is no tidy English verb for it. |
| merendar | 0.571 | Useful if you are going to Spain. Otherwise, recognise it and move on. |
| puente | 22.953 | Learn the bridge sense first. The long-weekend sense follows on its own. |
| tocayo | 0.269 | Recognise it. Charming, and you will rarely need to produce it. |
| vergüenza ajena | 0.174 | Recognise it. Worth knowing because the concept travels. |
| trasnochar | 0.121 | Recognise it. The idea is clear from context every time. |
| friolero | 0.033 | Culture, not homework. Commoner in speech than these book numbers show. |
| empalagar | 0.017 | Culture, not homework. Meet it in a book and enjoy it. |
Is morriña a Spanish word or a Galician one?
Both, and the order matters. It is Galician first. Spanish took it in, and the Spanish dictionary now carries it with a colloquial label and a set of synonyms.
That is what usually sits behind an untranslatable word. Not a gap in other languages, but a word that travelled and picked up a reputation on the way.
The same pattern runs through Spanish. Regional words cross a border and change value, which is what we found when we mapped how Spanish swearing shifts from country to country, and again when we looked at how Spanish sounds across the regions of Spain.
What can this measurement not tell you?
Quite a lot, and a number is worth less when you hide its limits.
So is any Spanish word really untranslatable?
Very few, on this evidence. The words on these lists are translatable. They just cost more words in English than in Spanish.
Sobremesa needs a clause in English and one word in Spanish. That is a difference in packing, not in what can be thought. The honest claim is that Spanish has a single word for something English spreads out, and that is interesting enough without the mysticism.
For a reader, the practical version is simpler. Some of these words will meet you halfway through chapter one. Others are waiting somewhere in book fifteen. Now you know which is which, and you can read our original list of ten untranslatable Spanish words with the numbers beside it.
If you want the words you truly cannot skip, they are the boring ones. The 500 most common Spanish words will do more for your first novel than every untranslatable list combined. After that, pick a book: our Spanish novels for beginners is where most readers start, and the words your textbook never taught you covers the everyday gaps.
Frequently asked questions
What does morriña mean?
In Galician and in Spanish it means a melancholy, low mood, especially the kind caused by being away from your home region. The Real Academia Española marks it colloquial and lists seven synonyms for it, including nostalgia and añoranza.
Is morriña Spanish or Galician?
Galician first. Spanish borrowed it, and the Spanish dictionary now carries it. In the Real Academia Galega dictionary it is three separate entries with five senses between them, and only one of those senses is the feeling.
Is morriña the same as saudade?
They are close and they are not identical. Saudade is Portuguese and covers a wider longing, including for people and for things that never happened. Morriña leans specifically on missing a place. In Spanish books saudade is slightly commoner than morriña, at 0.160 per million against 0.115.
Are untranslatable Spanish words worth learning?
Some of them. Madrugada, sobremesa and estrenar are common enough in books to earn a place in your vocabulary. Friolero and empalagar are so rare on the page that they work better as culture than as study. The gap between the commonest and the rarest word on our own list is 709 times.
Which Spanish emotion word should I actually learn first?
Ilusión. It means an eager, forward-looking hope, English has no single clean word for it, and it appears at 17.545 per million, which makes it 153 times commoner than morriña. It is the untranslatable word you will genuinely use.
Where do these frequency numbers come from?
The Google Books Spanish corpus, averaged over 2000 to 2019, with no smoothing, expressed as appearances per million words. It counts printed books, so it undercounts spoken and regional usage, and it does not include Galician-language books.
The fastest way to learn which words matter is to meet them in a book. Frequency lists tell you what to expect. A finished novel makes it stick. Our free Spanish Reading Starter Pack picks a first book for your level and gives you the plan to finish it. Get the Starter Pack at Audaz Revista.
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