Re
Super, really, so — the prefix Argentines glue onto everything: re lindo, re caro, re bien.
Related lesson: Argentine Spanish — A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
La película estuvo re buena.
The movie was really good.
Estoy re cansado, hoy me acuesto temprano.
I'm super tired, I'm going to bed early tonight.
Es re caro ese restaurante, mejor vamos a otro lado.
That restaurant is really expensive — let's go somewhere else.
Me re gusta cómo canta.
I really like the way she sings.
—¿Te copa ir a la costa el finde? —¡Re!
—Fancy going to the coast this weekend? —Totally!
What It Actually Means
Re is Argentina’s universal intensifier — a tiny prefix meaning “very” or “super” that attaches to almost anything: adjectives (re lindo), adverbs (re bien), nouns (re amigos — “really close friends”), and even whole verb phrases (me re gusta). Standard Spanish uses muy or -ísimo; Argentines just stack re in front and move on. It’s one of the fastest, cheapest ways to make a sentence sound rioplatense.
How Far It Stretches
- Re + adjective — the base case: “re caro”, “re fácil”.
- Re + noun — “total, absolute”: “Es un re problema” (“it’s a real problem”), “Somos re amigos.”
- Re inside verb phrases — “Te re entiendo” (“I totally get you”), “La re pasamos bien” (“we had a great time”).
- Standalone — as an enthusiastic “totally!” in response to a question.
- Stacked for emphasis — “re re bueno”, because one intensifier is never enough at 2 a.m. in Buenos Aires.
Where Textbooks Get It Wrong
Textbooks teach muy and stop there, but nobody warns you that in Argentina muy often sounds oddly flat in casual speech — natives reach for re by default. Spain has its own version of this (with super), but the Argentine re is more aggressive about what it attaches to: super rarely splits a verb phrase, while re does it daily (“me re sirve”).
Common Pitfall
Register: re is casual speech and chat messages, not formal writing — “el informe está re completo” in a work email will read as unserious. And keep the geography straight: Spain says super or muy, Mexico leans on bien (“está bien bueno”). If you’re saying re every third word, congratulations — you’ve been in Buenos Aires long enough.