quiubo

What it means

1. 1.

   Hi; what's up. The default informal greeting across Colombia, usually first in the sentence and usually followed by a name or by parce.

2. 2.

   With rising intonation and no greeting function: 'so what happened?', pressing someone for an answer they owe you.

Literally: What was there? — a worn-down ¿qué hubo?

Examples with translations

• ¡Quiubo, parce! ¿Cómo va todo?

  Hey man! How's everything going?

• Quiubo, ¿entonces sí vamos o no?

  So what's the deal, are we going or not?

  Note: Impatient sense — asked of someone who has been dodging the question.

Where it comes from

Phonetic reduction of ¿qué hubo?, literally 'what has there been?'. The spelling is unsettled — quiubo, qué hubo and the eye-dialect q'hubo all appear, and a Bogotá tabloid is named after the last of them.

Other forms

Spellings and variants:

qué hubo, q'hubo, quiubo pues

Similar terms:

qué más, bien o qué