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Spanish Word of the Day Archive
Saturday June 16, 2007
inri, noun:
to make matters worse, to cap it all
Because culture in Spain has been very influenced by the Catholic Church, there is a lot of religious imagery in the language. This imagery extends to informal and colloquial phrases, such as para más inri, to make matters worse, to cap it all.
No le ayudaba el hecho de ser mujer, y, para más inri, con vaqueros.
The fact she was a woman, and, to cap it all, wearing jeans, didn’t help.
The phrase comes from the letters written on a sign on the Cross when Christ was crucified: INRI, short for the Latin Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, meaning Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
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