What does “se dice el milagro, pero no el santo” mean?
El problema del papel en el baño
A2 Spanish listening practice · Andean Spanish · Curated for beginners
This old Spanish saying compares gossip to a religious miracle: people happily talk about the amazing thing that happened, but conveniently leave out which saint gets the credit — meaning you can admit an outcome happened without giving up who caused it. In this clip, someone yells for help getting out of an awkward bathroom situation and gets teased back with se dice el milagro, pero no el santo — roughly “nice try hiding how you got yourself into this.”
The saying is used any time someone reveals a result while protecting the identity behind it — a classic move when someone doesn’t want to name who told them a secret, or who’s really responsible for a mess. It works as a gentle accusation too: pointing out that someone is clearly leaving out an inconvenient detail of their own story.
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Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-ESP 2011 (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.