What does “garrapata” mean in Spanish?
Síntomas de la enfermedad de Lyme por picaduras de garrapata
B1 Spanish listening practice · Spanish from Spain · Picked for people who know some
A garrapata is a tick — the tiny parasite that latches onto skin or fur and can carry diseases like Lyme. The word is easy to lock in through a folk reading: garra (claw) + pata (paw), “a thing with claws on its paws.” Scholars actually trace it to a pre-Roman root (compare Basque kaparra), but the claw-paw image is the one that sticks — which is the whole job of a tick anyway.
A tick bite is una picadura de garrapata. The related verb garrapatear means to scrawl or scribble — jerky little marks that look like crawling bugs, also called garabatos. Knowing garra (claw/grit) pays off elsewhere too: tener garra means to have fighting spirit.
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Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-ESP 2011 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.