Bicho / bicha
A kid — in El Salvador. In Puerto Rico the same four letters are one of the crudest words in the language.
Related lesson: Salvadoran Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
Ese bicho no se está quieto ni un minuto.
That kid won't sit still for a minute.
—¿Y los bichos? —Están donde la abuela.
'Where are the kids?' 'They're round at their grandmother's.'
Cuando era bicho jugaba fútbol en la calle todos los días.
When I was a kid I played football in the street every day.
What It Actually Means
In El Salvador a bicho / bicha is a child or a young teenager — the same ground as cipote, a shade more colloquial and a shade more affectionate-rough. Los bichos are the kids; un bicho de diez años is a ten-year-old; cuando era bicho is how a Salvadoran opens a childhood story. It is unremarkable in speech and appears without a flicker in conversation between parents.
Where It Comes From
From standard Spanish bicho, a bug or small creature, which across the Spanish-speaking world got aimed at people and then diverged wildly. Spain kept it as un mal bicho, a nasty piece of work. El Salvador narrowed it down to the small, restless, permanently underfoot variety of creature — a child. And Puerto Rico took the same “creature” and made it obscene. One root, three centuries, no shared destination.
How Natives Use It
Interchangeably with cipote in most sentences, slightly more so in casual speech than in print, and with the feminine bicha in full use. Salvadorans also say bicho of a young person acting their age (es un bicho todavía) and, in the diaspora, keep it long after other markers have gone — it is one of the last words to survive in a family that has otherwise switched to English.
Common Pitfall
This is the trap entry, and the warning is not decorative. In Puerto Rico, bicho means the penis and is genuinely vulgar — not cheeky, not borderline, but the kind of word that stops a room. The same sense runs through parts of the Caribbean, so asking after somebody’s bichos in San Juan is not a small mistake. See the Puerto Rico hub before you use it anywhere east of Honduras; in doubt, say niños, which is safe everywhere, or cipote, which is safe across Central America.