Cerote
Mate, bro — or a genuinely filthy insult. Literally a turd, and the difference is entirely who is saying it to whom.
Related lesson: Guatemalan Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
¿Qué onda, cerote? Años de no verte.
What's up, mate? Haven't seen you in years.
No seás cerote, devolvele su pisto.
Don't be a swine, give him his money back.
Ese cerote me dejó plantado otra vez.
That idiot stood me up again.
What It Actually Means
Cerote is Guatemala’s most loaded piece of vocabulary. Its literal sense is a turd — a lump of excrement — and from there it runs in two opposite directions at once. Between close friends, overwhelmingly men who have known each other for years, it is the standard vocative for mate, bro, you old bastard: “qué onda, cerote” is warm. Aimed at anyone who has not been granted that licence, or said with any coldness at all, it is a coarse insult of the swine/piece-of-shit family. There is no neutral middle setting.
Where It Comes From
From the older Spanish cerote, the black wax-and-pitch mix shoemakers rub on their thread — a dark, hard lump. Guatemalan usage moved it from that lump to the anatomical one and then to the person, which is the usual route for words of this kind but is not documented step by step; peninsular Spanish took the same noun in a different direction, where cerote came to mean fear. The friendly sense is the recent layer, and it works the way weón does in Chile and boludo in Argentina: an insult worn smooth by constant use among people who mean the opposite of it.
How Natives Use It
Capital-heavy, male-heavy, and dense — in Guatemala City it can appear several times a sentence, as address, as filler and as punchline, alongside the diminutive cerotito and the feminine cerota, which is much rarer and much less affectionate. Guatemalans themselves keep it away from parents, workplaces, classrooms and anyone older than them. In the highlands and in the more formal registers of the country it is heard far less; the usted half of Guatemalan life does not use this word at all.
Common Pitfall
Do not be the foreigner who tries this out. The affectionate use is a privilege granted by an existing friendship, not a way to start one, and there is no tone of voice that rescues it when the relationship is not already there. Wait until Guatemalans use it to you, repeatedly, and even then keep it to the ones who did. If you want the safe register, the whole rest of the shelf is available: muchá for a group, or plain vos — see the Guatemala guide for how the pronouns line up.