A deep dive – plug your nose – into the bowels of Mexican slang.
Pedo, in Mexico, is not a pedophile. Hopefully your search engine and those algorithms at Google et al won’t punish you for reading this. Did you turn off your cookies?
A pedo is a fart, but the word is so much more versatile than just describing the (hopefully) occasional escaping of noxious fumes from one’s behind. It is a most amazing and useful term that can be applied in all manner of situations from when one is pleasantly inebriated to those that could be defined as unmistakably problematic.
¿Que pedo? is a greeting, which could be friendly and also threatening depending on the tone and body language employed when emitting the statement. Literally “what fart?” it’s meaning can range from the friendly “what’s happening” to the aggressive “what are you looking at” common at bars in the sketchier neighborhoods of northern Mexican cities.
Tengo un pedo is the lament of someone who has a problem and is coming to you for help or comfort.
No hay pedo means there is no problem at all, really. You asked someone to help you with a ride to the mall or home from the bar and you thank them and this is an acceptable reply.
Speaking of bars and such, you might be drinking a lot and become pedo. You see it also means “drunk” and can even be turned into a descriptor for the entire process of getting to be pedo in the first place. An extended bout of alcohol consumption resulting in unconsciousness or comas is called a peda.
From pedo come derivations and permutations. Un pedorro is what you call someone who is a braggart, who is constantly on about how great he is, how shiny his car is, how he is rolling in money and so on. He is a great farter.
Note that the use of pedo in everyday conversation should be limited to people with whom one is comfortably familiar. This is not something that should come up in a chat with your bank teller, your doctor or the lady that comes to clean your house on Thursdays.
The lady that comes on Tuesday? It’s fine. No hay pedo.