fruta bomba

What it means

1. 1.

   Papaya. The fruit is called this in Havana and the west of the island because papaya is a coarse word for the vulva, and asking for one in a market will get you laughed at.

2. 2.

   In the east of Cuba the same fruit is usually fruta bomba too, though some speakers there use papaya without embarrassment — the taboo weakens as you move away from Havana.

Examples with translations

• Dame un batido de fruta bomba.

  Give me a papaya milkshake.

• Aquí no se dice papaya, asere.

  We don't say papaya here, mate.

  Note: The correction a Cuban will make, gently, the first time a visiting Mexican or Spaniard orders one.

Where it comes from

A euphemistic renaming, driven entirely by the obscene sense of papaya in Cuban and Dominican Spanish. It is the cleanest example of a whole class of Cuban avoidance vocabulary, and one of the few slang facts that can save a tourist real embarrassment.