Quote:
Originally Posted by omk3
About embarazada... I wonder about the history of this peculiar meaning in Spanish. Maybe pregnancy is (or was) in some cases considered embarrassing? (Like out of wedlock?) It is interesting that it's not used for (other) animals.
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I think it's simply due to the fact that anything connected with reproduction was considered dirty, and could not be mentioned directly. My mother told me that when she was young, she was once taken to visit a friend of her mother. She was told this lady had broken her leg (presumably she was at the hospital or in bed at home), but when the visitors arrived there just happened to be a newborn baby.
Jane Austen calls childbirth "confinement".
When I was a teenager myself, I remember one of my classmates asking me with a silly girly giggle whether I was "indisposed" (incommodée). I looked at her stupidly and said "No, I'm fine". In fact she wanted to know whether I had started having my periods.
