What does “trabalenguas” literally mean in Spanish?

A trabalenguas is a “tongue-twister,” and it’s built exactly like what it does: trabar (“to jam, snag, lock up”) plus lenguas (“tongues”). So the word literally means a “tongue-jammer” — a phrase engineered to snag your tongue. Once you see trabar inside it, the joke in the clip clicks: when Derbez fumbles and groans estoy bien trabado, he’s saying “I’m all jammed up,” same root, same idea.

That verb trabar is worth keeping. It’s the “to snag / get stuck” verb — a door that se traba, a conversation you trabas (strike up), machinery that jams. The reflexive trabarse is your everyday word for tripping over your own words: me trabé = “I got tongue-tied.” So trabalenguas isn’t a random label; it’s trabar + lenguas doing exactly what it says.