Gurí / gurisa
Boy / girl — the interior and northern word for a child, a Guaraní loan that reached Uruguay through Brazilian Portuguese.
Related lesson: Uruguayan Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
El gurí se durmió en el auto antes de llegar a Tacuarembó.
The lad fell asleep in the car before we reached Tacuarembó.
De gurisa me criaron mis abuelos en el campo.
I was brought up by my grandparents in the countryside as a girl.
¡Vengan a comer, gurises, que se enfría!
Come and eat, kids, it is getting cold!
What It Actually Means
A gurí is a boy, a gurisa a girl, and gurises the whole lot of them. It means the same thing as botija but carries a different postcode: gurí belongs to the interior, the countryside and above all the north, while botija is the Montevideo default. Both are used everywhere — this is a lean, not a border — but a Uruguayan who says gurí by reflex is telling you something about where they grew up.
Where It Comes From
From Tupi-Guaraní, via Brazilian Portuguese guri (boy, lad), which is why the word is strongest exactly where Uruguay touches Brazil. It is shared across the whole of that cultural region: Rio Grande do Sul on the Brazilian side, the Argentine littoral of Entre Ríos and Corrientes, and Paraguay. Uruguay’s northern departments have been bilingual for two centuries, and this is one of the loans that came south and stayed.
How Natives Use It
Affectionately and without any register problem: parents, teachers, grandparents and neighbours all use it. The feminine is the marked form — gurisa, sometimes gurisita — and the diminutive gurisito/gurisita is standard for a very small child. Unlike botija, it is not commonly turned on adults as a jab; it stays fairly literally about children.
Common Pitfall
Do not assume it is interchangeable with the Buenos Aires vocabulary. Argentina’s pibe / piba covers the same ground in the capital but is a different word with a different history, and using gurí in Buenos Aires marks you as from the provinces rather than from Uruguay. And get the feminine right: gurí is not gender-neutral the way botija is — a girl is a gurisa.