jeva
HEH-vahnounInformal
A Cuban Spanish slang term. Browse all Cuban slang.
What it means
A girlfriend. Mi jeva is the ordinary way a young Cuban man refers to the woman he is with.
More loosely, a young woman. In this sense it is casual rather than rude, but it is not a word you would use about someone in her presence unless you knew her.
Masculine jevo: boyfriend, bloke.
Examples with translations
Vino con la jeva y los dos niños.
He came with his girlfriend and the two kids.
Esa jeva estudia conmigo.
That girl is on my course.
Where it comes from
Origin uncertain. The commonest proposal is a phonetic reshaping of Eva, as a generic name for a woman; another links it to English 'heifer' by way of Caribbean port contact, which is phonetically plausible and semantically unpleasant. Neither is settled. The word is shared across the Hispanic Caribbean and Venezuela.
Other forms
- Similar terms:
- pura, chama