cojones

Borrowed from Spanish cojones (“testicles, balls”). Doublet of cullion and culeus.

• IPA^(key): /kəˈhoʊˌneɪs/, /kəˈhoʊniːz/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

cojones pl (plural only)

1. (slang, usually vulgar) Synonym of balls (“testicles; courage, masculinity”).
   • 2005, Total Overdose, spoken by Ramiro “Ram” Cruz (Simon Prescott as Cesar Morales and Daniel E. Mora), Square Enix Europe; Eidos Interactive, via Deadline Games and Square Enix:

     Stepping right into a trap... Your biggest problem is that you got big cojones but nothing in your brains.
     I think Freud would have something to say about your obsession with my big cojones.

   • 2013 July 10, Daniel Prendergast, “‘You don’t have the cojones’: 54-year-old woman fronts up to would-be muggers who pointed gun at her chest”, in New York Post‎^[1], archived from the original on 2 August 2016:

     The feisty wife of a world-renowned Russian sculptor emasculated an armed thug outside her Soho home — saying he “didn’t have the cojones to shoot her,” police sources said yesterday.

• “cojones”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “cojones”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “cojones”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “cojones”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.

• Conejos

From Late Latin cōleonēs, from Latin cōleus (“sack, scrotum”).

• IPA^(key): /koˈxones/ [koˈxo.nes]

• Audio (Venezuela):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ones
• Syllabification: co‧jo‧nes

cojones

1. (vulgar, Spain, idiomatic) fuck!, shit!, damn!, damn it!, what the fuck!, bloody hell!, bollocks!
   • 2022 November 10, Ibai Llanos Garatea, El País‎^[2], archived from the original on 12 November 2022:

     Me surgió la oportunidad de ir en el avión de la selección española de fútbol a Qatar y bueno, iba a grabar contenido, no iba a hacer directos, sino que iba a grabar contenidos, pero no me sale de los cojones y no lo voy a hacer.

     I had the opportunity to fly to Qatar on the Spanish national football team's plane, and well, I was going to record content. I wasn't going to do live shows, but I was going to record content, but I just can't bring myself to do it, and I'm not going to do it.

cojones

1. (vulgar, Spain, Chile, colloquial) the fuck, the hell

   ¿Qué cojones?

   What the hell?

• → English: cojones

cojones (vulgar, slang)

1. (literally) testicles, bollocks, balls (plural of cojón)
2. (figuratively) balls, guts (courage)

• “cojones”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025
• “cojones” in Lexico, Oxford University Press.