patear
to kick
Physical foot actions and their figurative extensions — striking with the foot, trudging around on foot, or getting on someone's nerves.
Encoding Strategies:
linguistic
visual
Patear means to kick and is a verb1 (-ear1) formed from pata0 (foot/leg0), i.e. to strike with one's foot.
patear
to kick
This is the core meaning — striking something with your foot.
to bother, to irritate
Something that bothers or irritates you hits you like a kick to the gut. Colloquial, especially common in Argentina and Latin America.
patearse
to walk all over (a place)
When you walk all over a city searching for something, your feet are doing so much work it feels like you're kicking the pavement with every step — the reflexive turns that effort back on yourself. Colloquial.
- 'Me pateé toda la ciudad buscando ese libro' → 'I walked all over the city looking for that book.'