Breakdown of Tuviste un hambre voraz y te engulliste el último bocado.
y
and
tener
to have
un
a, an (masculine)
el hambre
hunger
te
to you / you (direct object)
último
last / final (in a sequence)
engullir
to gobble down
el bocado
the bite
voraz
voracious
Questions & Answers about Tuviste un hambre voraz y te engulliste el último bocado.
Why is there a te before engulliste? Isn't the verb just engullir?
This is the focus of our current lesson: the affective dative (dativo ético). While engullir alone means "to gobble" or "to swallow whole," adding the extra pronoun te emphasizes that you ate it greedily or completely. It adds emotional color to the action, very similar to saying "you gobbled it all up" in English.
Isn't hambre a feminine noun? Why does the sentence use un instead of una?
You are right that hambre is feminine! However, because it starts with a stressed "a" sound (the "h" is silent), Spanish swaps una for un (and la for el) to avoid the awkward blending of the two "a" sounds. Note that adjectives describing it still act feminine, which is why we would say mucha hambre, not mucho hambre (though voraz happens to be the same for both genders).
Why use the preterite tuviste instead of the imperfect tenías for being hungry? Doesn't hunger describe a background state?
Usually, yes! We typically use the imperfect (tenías hambre) to describe the ongoing background state of being hungry. By deliberately choosing the preterite (tuviste), the speaker frames the hunger as a sudden, intense onset—an overwhelming spike of hunger that hit you right at that moment and caused you to devour the food.
Can bocado be used for any type of bite, like a mosquito bite?
No, bocado specifically means a mouthful or a bite of food. If you are talking about an insect bite or a snake bite, you would use picadura. For a bite from an animal with teeth (like a dog), you would use mordedura or mordida.
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