What does “enchilarse” mean besides “spicy” in Mexican Spanish?

Enchilarse literally means your mouth is burning from chile, but in Mexican Spanish it doubles as “to get angry” or “to lose it.” The two senses reinforce each other: someone enchilado from spice often looks flushed, gasping, and short-tempered — the exact same look as someone enchilado with rage. This clip plays both meanings at once: a kid eats chips too spicy to handle, then their mom se enchila all over again on finding every last chip gone.

The figurative sense is specific to Mexico and Costa Rica; elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world, enchilarse just means the literal chili burn. The joke lands on the physical overlap — red face, sharp intake of breath, sudden temper — which makes enchilarse a rare Spanish word where the metaphor for anger is something you can also just eat too much of.