pifiar

Borrowed from Spanish.

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic)
• IPA^(key): (Valencia)
• Homophone: pifià
• Rhymes: -a(ɾ)

pifiar (first-person singular present pifio, first-person singular preterite pifií, past participle pifiat)

1. (intransitive) to mess up

   Synonym: espifiar

• “pifiar”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2025
• “pifiar” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “pifiar” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

From Middle High German pfīfen (modern German pfeifen (“to whistle”)).

• IPA^(key): /piˈfjaɾ/
• Rhymes: -aɾ
• Syllabification: pi‧fiar

pifiar (first-person singular present pifio, first-person singular preterite pifié, past participle pifiado)

1. (intransitive) to drop the ball, screw up, mess up

   Pifié en la primera nota.

   I screwed up the very first note.

2. (transitive, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru) to boo
3. (transitive, Bolivia, Peru) to mock, dig, make fun of
4. (transitive, Mexico) to nick, rob
   • 2016, Juan Cadavid, El envenenador de Tarragona, Punto Rojo, →ISBN, page 236:

     Su madre era una buena mujer, pero había vivido esclavizada por las drogas y por su marido, que no tenía la hombría de salir cada día a rebuscar el dinero para sus vicios, sino que le ordenaba a ella que se acostara con hombres para luego pifiar todo su dinero.

     His mother was a good woman but she had lived enslaved to drugs and her husband, who didn't have the manhood to leave the house each day to seek after the money for his his vices but ordered her to lay with men so that later he could nick all their money.

5. (intransitive, music) to blow across a flute or other reedless woodwind instrument

• “pifiar”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10