Nicaraguan Slang: The Words You'll Hear, and the Ones That Flip at the Border

Calle La Calzada in Granada, a pedestrian street of café tables and shade trees, photographed around midday in 2013. Photo: Nolabob, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

What does a goat have to do with crossing from Nicaragua into Costa Rica? More than you would think. In Nicaragua, if someone tells you a street or a situation is chiva, they mean it is risky and you should watch yourself. Across the border, a Costa Rican who says ¡qué chiva! is telling you something is great.

That kind of flip is what makes Nicaraguan slang so much fun to learn. Nicaraguan Spanish shares plenty of vocabulary with its neighbors, but some words cross the border with a new meaning, a new spelling or one letter quietly dropped. This is a working glossary for travelers: the words you are likely to hear in your first days on the Pacific coast, where they come from when the dictionaries can tell us, and what changes once you reach Costa Rica.

First, the "vos" you will hear everywhere

Before any single word, there is the grammar. Nicaraguans use vos for the informal "you", and they use it a lot. Wikipedia's overview of Nicaraguan Spanish describes Nicaragua as having the highest frequency of voseo in Central America. You will hear it in the stressed verb endings: vení (come), andá (go), decime (tell me), or the everyday greeting ¿qué hacés? (what are you up to?).

Two other things help your ear. Many Nicaraguans soften or drop the "s" at the end of a syllable, so a phrase written dale pues often comes out closer to "dale pue". And the word adiós does double duty. Rough Guides notes that it is used as a greeting in passing as well as a goodbye, so a stranger saying adiós as you walk by is saying hello, not dismissing you.

Rough Guides also points out that it is polite to address strangers with usted rather than the familiar forms. That habit will carry you a long way in both countries.

Nicaraguan slang you will hear in the first day or two

• Dale pues. Literally "give it, then", and used for OK, deal, let's do it, or see you. When someone asked how to use it in a January 2026 thread on r/Nicaragua, locals answered with "yes", "to seal an agreement" and "as a goodbye", and one pointed out that a long, drawn out "daaale pueees" can mean the person is going along with the plan without much conviction. You may also hear va pues.
• Chele, chela. A fair skinned or light haired person, and very often what visitors get called. FluentU and Lingopie both describe it as usually neutral or simply descriptive, sometimes even a nickname. Rough Guides and many travel lists say it comes from leche (milk), but the Real Academia's dictionary traces it to the Nahuatl celic, "something green" or "something tender", and records it in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras as well as Nicaragua.
• Maje. Dude, guy, or simply "that person". The RAE also lists an older meaning, "fool", which is why tone matters so much. FluentU and The Culture Trip both warn that it can land badly with older people.
• ¿Ideay? A one word reaction to something odd or unfair, somewhere between "hey, what?" and "come on". The RAE defines it as an interjection of surprise or protest used in Nicaragua.
• ¡Chocho! Wow. The RAE lists it as a Nicaraguan interjection for amazement, joy or admiration.
• Nica and pinolero. What Nicaraguans call themselves. The RAE traces pinolero to pinole, toasted ground corn, the base of pinolillo, which we covered in our guide to Nicaraguan drinks.

One bonus that surprises people: in Nicaragua, estar chele can also mean to be broke, out of money and out of work, according to the RAE. Context does the heavy lifting.

Tuani, a code word from the 1800s

If something is cool, good looking or just right, a Nicaraguan might call it tuani. A popular theory, repeated by Matador Network among others, says the Costa Rican form tuanis comes from the English "too nice". The Real Academia's dictionary tells a better story.

According to the RAE, tuani comes from malespín, a letter swapping code in which b and t trade places, as do e and a, and o and i. Run the word bueno through it and you get t, u, a, n, i. Tuani is "good" in disguise.

Malespín is traditionally said to have started in 19th century El Salvador and spread across Central America. Wikipedia's summary, which draws on work by Róger Matus Lazo of the Academia Nicaragüense de la Lengua, describes it as vestigial today, surviving in only a small number of words. Tuani is one of them. In Nicaragua you will mostly hear tuani, while Costa Ricans tend to add the final s, a difference the Nicaraguan outlet Qué Tal Nicaragua points out in its list of words the two countries share.

Small words for errands, money and the morning after

These are the words that show up around shops, buses and beach bars. None of them are rude, and most of them you will hear before you ever say them.

• Pulpería. The neighborhood corner shop for water, snacks and everyday groceries. The RAE says the name comes from pulpa, because these shops originally sold tropical fruit and sweets made from it. Costa Rica uses the same word.
• Chunche. Thingamajig, any object whose name you do not know or do not feel like saying. Shared with Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama, and possibly from the Nahuatl tsultic, "old", according to the RAE.
• Chochada. A trifle, or nonsense. "Es una chochada" means it is nothing to worry about.
• Brete and pegue. Both mean a job. Brete is shared with Costa Rica, where you will hear it constantly.
• Palmado. Broke. The RAE also gives it a second Nicaraguan sense: bored and low on energy.
• Guaro. Cane liquor, the RAE says, used across Central America, and in casual talk liquor in general.
• De goma. Hungover. Estar de goma works in Costa Rica too.
• Salado. Unlucky, literally "salted". You will hear it on both sides of the border.
• Andar en la 11. To go on foot, because two legs look like the number 11. The Culture Trip lists it, and so did a Nicaraguan user's list of everyday phrases on r/Spanish.
• Chavalo, chavala. A kid or young person. The youngest child in a family is the cumiche.
• Jaño, jaña. Boyfriend, girlfriend.
• Cuecho. Gossip.
• Bacanal. A big party. Live Lingua, FluentU and that same r/Spanish list all use it this way.

Crossing into Costa Rica: same words, new meanings

If your trip runs from San Juan del Sur down into Guanacaste, (we wrote about combining Costa Rica and Nicaragua on one surf trip), your Nicaraguan slang will mostly survive the border. A few words just change their clothes.

Chiva flips

This is the one to remember. Qué Tal Nicaragua puts it plainly: "¡Está súper chiva!" in Costa Rica means something is great, while the same phrase in Nicaragua means it is dangerous or difficult. The Costa Rican Spanish site costaricanspanish.com adds that Ticos occasionally use chiva for "angry" as well, though "cool" is what travelers will hear most.

Maje loses its j

In Costa Rica, maje became mae, and it is everywhere. Research summarized by the Universidad de Costa Rica traces the word's first Costa Rican record to a 1953 glossary of slang, where it meant fool. By 1985 a philologist had documented young men using it to call each other "guy", and the short form mae first appeared in a dictionary in 1991. A 2020 study by Jorge Antonio Leoni de León and Sergio Cordero Monge found mae now used for women as well as men, and even for pets and misbehaving phones. Qué Tal Nicaragua jokes that if you say maje with the j in Costa Rica, people will know straight away that you are Nicaraguan.

Ideay becomes diay

The Nicaraguan ideay shrinks to diay, or even just "di", in Costa Rica. The RAE lists diay for affirmation, questions, admiration and plain "no idea", plus as a greeting. Matador Network's best example is a conversation in which someone asks how to explain what diay means, and the answer is simply "Diay."

Pura vida came from a Mexican movie

Costa Rica's most famous phrase has a surprising origin. According to the Universidad de Costa Rica and the newspaper La Nación, it took hold after the 1956 release in Costa Rica of the Mexican comedy ¡Pura vida!, in which the comedian Antonio Espino, known as Clavillazo, plays a hapless optimist who says the phrase 13 times. Ticos gave it jobs the film never did, using it to say hello and goodbye, and also thanks and "all good". The Tico Times notes that by the mid 1990s dictionaries were recording it as a Costa Rican expression with at least seven uses.

A few more you will need in Guanacaste

• Upe. What you call out at someone's door to ask if anyone is home.
• Tico, tica. A Costa Rican. The RAE says the nickname comes from how often Costa Ricans use the diminutive ending ico, as in momentico.
• Usted, even among friends. Costa Ricans lean on usted far more than Nicaraguans do, including, in a trend linguists have documented, young men talking to close friends.

Guanacaste is also where the two ways of speaking overlap most. The Universidad de Costa Rica's summary of linguist Miguel Ángel Quesada Pacheco's research describes a long period of trade and migration, from about 1730 to 1824, that strengthened the linguistic ties between northern Guanacaste and Nicaragua, including settlers from Rivas, the department San Juan del Sur belongs to, who moved south and founded cattle ranches. If you end your trip in Tamarindo, Surf Ranch Tamarindo has nine rooms just across the road from Tamarindo Beach, with breakfast at Café 13, and the direct rate on our own site is always the lowest. Our Tamarindo page has more on the town.

How to use it without trying too hard

Our recommendation is simple: learn to recognize these words long before you try to perform them. Slang is a little like a local surf break. It is easier to join in once you have watched for a while.

• Say dale pues back. It is friendly, safe with anyone, and useful dozens of times a day.
• Use usted with older people, officials and anyone you have just met. Switch to vos only when they do.
• Let maje come to you. If a friend calls you maje, you can call them maje. With a shopkeeper's grandmother, probably not.
• Treat chele as something you hear, not something you say. It is usually meant kindly, but it is a word about appearance, and it sounds better coming from locals.
• Skip the strong stuff. Many slang lists online mix in vulgar expressions without saying so. Leave those alone until you really know the room.

San Juan del Sur is a good place to start listening. Surf Ranch San Juan del Sur reopens on Thursday, 22 October 2026, about 3 km from downtown with free private parking, and booking direct on surfranchnicaragua.com includes breakfast. You can read more on our San Juan del Sur page or see what booking direct gets you on our book direct page.

Where to read next

If you are planning to cross the border by land, our older guide on how to cross the Costa Rica and Nicaragua border is a good companion to this one, and it is the moment when chiva, maje and ideay start changing meaning around you. If you would rather hear Nicaraguan Spanish on a long, slow afternoon, start with a day in Granada from San Juan del Sur, take a table on Calle La Calzada and just listen. Dale pues will not take long to show up.