Spanish language: sometimes a button is just a button?

January 29, 2019 7:05 AM

In the lovely Luis Enrique song Yo No Se Mañana, there is a line where I wonder if I am missing an idiom (I'm lazily learning Spanish): "De un café pasamos al sofa, de un boton a todo lo demas." The literal (machine) translation is "From a coffee we go to the sofa, from a button to everything else." Does "un boton" refer to sexytimes or ...? A kiss? A button on the TV remote next to the sofa?
posted by exogenous to Society & Culture (4 answers total)

Best answer: I don't speak Spanish, but I would parse that as him taking off her clothes (and vice versa), starting with undoing one button. Then sexytimes.

But I I will also defer to anyone who knows if that's an idiom.
posted by brainmouse at 7:09 AM on January 29, 2019 [7 favorites]

Response by poster: Oh, right, clothes have buttons. I feel foolish!
posted by exogenous at 7:16 AM on January 29, 2019

Best answer: Also remember that un is both "a" and "one"...here I think the best translation is "From the cafe we moved on to the sofa, from one button [we moved on] to all the rest" because it's also a parallel construction with the shared verb.
posted by drlith at 7:21 AM on January 29, 2019 [6 favorites]

Best answer: Don't feel too foolish, my first thought was button was somehow a euphemism for clitoris!
posted by GoblinHoney at 2:31 PM on January 30, 2019