cojones

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Spanish cojones (“testicles, balls”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kəˈhoʊˌneɪs/, /kəˈhoʊniːz/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Noun

cojones pl (plural only)

1. (slang, usually vulgar) Synonym of balls (“testicles; courage, masculinity”).
   • 2005, Total Overdose, spoken by Ramiro “Ram” Cruz (Simon Prescott as Cesar Morales and Daniel E. Mora), Square Enix Europe; Eidos Interactive, via Deadline Games and Square Enix:

     Stepping right into a trap... Your biggest problem is that you got big cojones but nothing in your brains.
     I think Freud would have something to say about your obsession with my big cojones.

   • 2013 July 10, Daniel Prendergast, “‘You don’t have the cojones’: 54-year-old woman fronts up to would-be muggers who pointed gun at her chest”, in New York Post‎^[1], archived from the original on 2 August 2016:

     The feisty wife of a world-renowned Russian sculptor emasculated an armed thug outside her Soho home — saying he “didn’t have the cojones to shoot her,” police sources said yesterday.

Further reading

• “cojones”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “cojones”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “cojones”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “cojones”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.

Anagrams

• Conejos

Spanish

Etymology

From Late Latin cōleonēs, from Latin cōleus (“sack, scrotum”). Doublet of cullion and culeus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /koˈxones/ [koˈxo.nes]

• Audio (Venezuela):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ones
• Syllabification: co‧jo‧nes

Interjection

cojones

1. (vulgar, Spain, idiomatic) fuck!, shit!, damn!, damn it!, what the fuck!, bloody hell!, bollocks!
   • 2022 November 10, Ibai Llanos Garatea, El País‎^[2], archived from the original on 12 November 2022:

     Me surgió la oportunidad de ir en el avión de la selección española de fútbol a Qatar y bueno, iba a grabar contenido, no iba a hacer directos, sino que iba a grabar contenidos, pero no me sale de los cojones y no lo voy a hacer.

     I had the opportunity to fly to Qatar on the Spanish national football team's plane, and well, I was going to record content. I wasn't going to do live shows, but I was going to record content, but I just can't bring myself to do it, and I'm not going to do it.

Adverb

cojones

1. (vulgar, Spain, Chile, colloquial) the fuck, the hell

   ¿Qué cojones?

   What the hell?

Descendants

• → English: cojones

Noun

cojones (vulgar, slang)

1. (literally) testicles, bollocks, balls (plural of cojón)
2. (figuratively) balls, guts (courage)

Further reading

• “cojones”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025
• “cojones” in Lexico, Oxford University Press.