¡Rayos! It has various meanings.

Question

I am watching Nick TV with my granddaughter and on the show for small children one of them says ¡Rayos! when he is frustrated! I always considered this word to mean Damn. But I guess it must be softer than that otherwise it wouldn't be on a kids show.

Answer 1

If you put rayo in the Translate feature, you will find in the definition under Interjections that rayos means "Heavens above". It doesn't seem to be as strong a "Damn!" In fact the overall sense of the word is about light.

Thanks for the post about it's use in children's TV.

Thanks Jubilado. I did run it through the translator, yet in real life I often hear it said when I would cuss in English so I assumed the idiomatic use was a cuss word. - gringojrf, Jul 13, 2013

Good discussion. I also wondered about this. - katydew, Jul 13, 2013