Purete
Excellent, top-notch, the best there is — a Spanish root wearing a Guaraní intensifier.
Related lesson: Paraguayan Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
Quedó purete tu casa nueva.
Your new place has turned out brilliant.
—¿Cómo te fue en el examen? —Purete.
'How did the exam go?' 'Brilliantly.'
Ese equipo está purete este año, no pierde nada.
That team is on top form this year — they're not losing anything.
What It Actually Means
Purete is Paraguay’s stamp of approval: excellent, first-rate, exactly as it should be. It covers what Spain does with genial, Argentina with copado and Chile with la raja, and it applies to objects, plans, football teams, food and people equally. There is no comparative and no ceiling above it — purete is already the top of the scale.
Where It Comes From
It is a hybrid, and one of the clearest ones in the country. The root is Spanish puro; the ending is the Guaraní intensifier -ete, which means “true, genuine, really” and attaches to adjectives all over the language — tuicha (big) becomes tuichaete (huge), añete means “true, truly”. Bolt it to puro and you get “pure through and through”. That analysis is the one every Paraguayan will give you and it fits how the suffix behaves elsewhere, though as with most slang coinages nobody wrote down the day it happened.
How Natives Use It
Informally, constantly, and as both adjective and standalone reaction. It takes estar far more often than ser — está purete is the normal shape — and it does not inflect for gender, which is what you would expect of something built on a Guaraní suffix. In writing it belongs to messages and social media, not to work email.
Common Pitfall
It only goes upward: purete has no ironic use in Paraguay, so saying it flatly about a disaster will simply be misheard as praise. And do not confuse it with Rioplatense purrete, one letter away, which means a small child — an easy slip on the Argentine border, and an entertaining one if you say it about somebody’s cooking.