What does “jardinicidio” mean in this robot-butler skit?
El conserje robot y el intento de jardinicidio
B2 Spanish listening practice · Mexican Spanish · Picked for people who know more
Jardinicidio isn’t a real dictionary word — it’s a joke, coined on the spot in this sketch to accuse a garden robot of “gardenicide.” It works instantly because Spanish speakers already know the pattern from real words: homicidio (homicide), suicidio (suicide), genocidio (genocide) all end in -cidio, from the Latin caedere, “to kill.”
Once you recognize -cidio as “the killing of ___,” you can decode — or invent — new ones on the fly, exactly as this sketch does. It’s a small but useful reminder that a lot of “big” Spanish vocabulary is really just recognizable Latin building blocks stacked together.
How common are the words?
How common are the words in this B2 Spanish listening practice video?
How common in written Spanish
How common in spoken Spanish
Harder words in this video
These words are harder than B2. Here is what they mean.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-ESP 2011 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.