Monday, November 08, 2004

Staying up late and sleeping in

I don't know any English word or even any phrase that succintly expresses the meaning of "desvelar." It means to stay up later than usual, to stay up really late, to stay up too late, to burn the midnight oil, or to pull an all-nighter. Any one of these might be the choice in English, depending on the context and the register. And any of them can be neatly expressed in just one and the same Spanish word without loss of nuance.

On the other hand, I don't know any way to say "to sleep in" in Spanish. I have to resort to circumlutions and longer explanations like "to get up later than usual" or to "to get up later than one meant to." It's interesting to note that although these are not (generally) the same, "to sleep in" covers them both in a way that is unambiguous in context.