Pragmatics

El rodeo cortés is the polite long way round, and el rodeo is a word English owns without knowing it owns. English borrowed it for one thing only: the arena where cattle are ridden. In Spanish that is the last of its senses. First it is the detour — dar un rodeo, to go the long way. Then it is the round-up itself, cattle driven in a circle. And then it is this, the thing pragmatics is about: andarse con rodeos, to beat about the bush. Where English needs a detour, a round-up, a rodeo and a bush to beat about, Spanish has one noun and one picture behind all four — going round instead of straight at it.