Meaning
In Puerto Rico, guagua can mean a bus and can also refer more broadly to a large passenger vehicle; compounds such as guagua pública name forms of public transport.
How it is used
ASALE records guagua as bus in Puerto Rico as well as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and other locations, and gives additional Puerto Rican vehicle senses. Discover Puerto Rico teaches guagua = bus as practical vocabulary for visitors.
Examples
- “Vamos en guagua hasta el terminal.”
- “La guagua pública pasa por varios pueblos.”
Pronunciation
/ˈɡwaɣwa/ · GWAH-gwah
Tone and register
Neutral and ordinary in Puerto Rican conversation. It is regional vocabulary rather than a marked slang performance.
Visitor guidance
Visitors can confidently understand guagua as bus or a larger passenger vehicle in Puerto Rico, but should remember that the same form means different things elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world, including child or baby in parts of South America.
Cultural context
Guagua is useful travel language and a clear example of pan-Hispanic lexical geography: the same written word can belong to entirely different everyday semantic systems depending on region.
Places represented
Open the reviewed place guide for each regional sense carried by this canonical entry.