Is "tengo más hambre que carpanta" a common phrase
Tengo más hambre que carpanta - Is this sentence a native sentence or is is kind of silly.
5 Answers
I'll give you a brief explanation about the word and the phrase. That character in the photo is from a comic strip that was popular in Spain in the 40's and 50's, and was supposed to be a guy who was always hungry (and broke, the real reason why he was hungry in the first place. However, even though the dictionary says that carpanta means 'hambre violenta', I'm sure at least 9 out of 10 Spaniards don't even know it -I certainly didn't- and if asked they'll probably say that 'Carpanta' was just a fictitious proper name for that character. In other words, don't ever use it in place of 'hunger' 
About the colloquial phrase, I really haven't heard it much, but I suppose some Spaniards, especially of older generations still use it. I'm still in my thirties, and I don't really feel compelled to say it, I feel like I would sound like a geezer. Since that character and the comic strip are relics of another time, I suppose it will eventually fall into disuse.
This is Carpanta 
The DRAE gives the following definition for "carpanta."
Carpanta—Hambre violenta
And here is an interesting link on the relation of this expression to the inception of the comic strip character by the same name Carpanta, bastante más que una palabra del DRAE
And it is in the phrasebook
I am from México and i haven't heard it before. carpanta sounds like spanish but i am not sure if even there is common.
