When the expression “Hablar por los codos” is used, it indicates that a person is talking very often and without stopping or too much, and even without saying anything relevant. It is also used in its other form which is “Talking up to the elbows”.
SYNONYMS FOR Hablar por los codos
- Talking too much or too much
- To say something irrelevant too often
- To talk incessantly
ORIGIN OF Hablar por los codos
There are several possible reasons for the origin of this expression, so none of the many hypotheses is decisive. But what is certain is that it is not a modern locution, since it is present in the Dictionary of Authorities of 1739, where it is given the meaning of “vulgar phrase with which it is exaggerated, of someone who talks a lot”.
There are those who say that the question of elbows refers to the act that some people perform by touching the elbow of their interlocutor in order to call his attention, when the other is not listening carefully to what the other is saying, or that it is also due to the typical gesture of giving the elbow to the other person while talking to him.
Other origins suggest that this expression had already been used in the first century by the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, who in his work “Satires” would have included it.
However, a third conjecture refers directly to marriages. When the wife talks and the husband falls asleep in bed, she tries to call his attention so that he will listen to her, there she hits him with her elbow in order to keep him awake.
CURIOSITIES OF Hablar por los codos
As a curious fact, it is remarkable that in the Portuguese language this expression is widely used in its form “Falar pelos cotovelos”, finding a lot of information about it and that comes to mean almost the same thing.