Hace un chingo de frío

It's winter time, and sometimes "hace frio" doesn't convey just how cold it is.    So let's look at a few ways to express just how cold it is in a more colorful fashion.

With that said, let's take a look at our phrase for today.

Hace un chingo de frío

We know that "hace frio" means it's cold.  That part is easy.  Now lets move on to "un chingo".

"Un chingo" is a lot of something.  It's synonomous with montón -- a ton of , a lot of.   But "un chingo" derives from Chingar.  If you don't already know, Chingar and its many variations are used to add "emphasis" to things. It's a word you'll quite often in this blog, and make no mistake about it, Chingar is along the lines of the F word in English.

But back to our phrase. 

If we put everything together, we get it "It makes a lot of cold", well, more like "It makes a lot of fucking cold", when you translate it literally.  But we'd just say "It's really fucking cold".

There are other ways to talk about how cold it is, all equally rude (grosero).

Hace un frio de la chingada.

Que puto frío!

Hace un frío hijo de puta!

Well, that's it for today.  I know there are expressions we didn't talk about, like "hijo de puta" and "de la chingada", but we'll get to those expressions and more in due time. 

And I really shouldn't have to tell you to "ten cuidado" (be careful) with these expressions, but I will anyway. 

Hasta la próxima!