Cojones (Spanish pronunciation: [koˈxones]) is a vulgar Spanish word for testicles or, denoting courage when used in the phrase "tener cojones" (equivalent to English "have the balls to"). It is considered a curse word when used by itself as an expletive in Spanish. In English, as a loanword, it means courage, brazenness, "nerve", "guts", etc.
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In US slang, cojones denotes “brazen, brave attitude”, pronounced /kəˈhoʊneɪz/ and /kəˈhuːnəz/ in English. Contextually, its usage is like that of the Yiddish chutzpah (nerve), the Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and Macedonian muda (balls), the French couilles (balls) and the Finnish sisu (perseverance). A common euphemistic misspelling of cojones is cajones (furniture “drawers” and "wooden box drums", see cajón).
The first English-language text to contain the word cojones as a metaphor for bravery is Ernest Hemingway's 1932 book on bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon. "It takes more cojones," he wrote, "to be a sportsman where death is a closer party to the game." '[1]
Cojones (s. cojón [koˈxon]) and huevos (eggs) or bolas/pelotas (balls) are vulgar Spanish curse-word usages for testicles. The singular form, cojón contains the augmentative suffix -ón (implying magnitude), and derives from the Vulgar Latin coleonem, the accusative form of coleo (testicle), an augmentative form of cōleus (leather bag for liquids); its variants are cūleus and culleus. The le → j or li → j pronunciation shift is common to Latin and Spanish, e.g. folia → hoja (leaf), which is a cognate with the English word "foliage".
The exclamation ¡Qué cojones! is used to express pain, anger, excitement or irony, and is approximately synonymous with the interjection ¡coño! (vulva) expressing anger and surprise. [2] Analogues to the Spanish cojones exist in Galician collóns, Valencian and Catalan collons French couilles, Italian coglioni, Portuguese colhões, Romanian coaie, Leonese coyones, Dutch kloten, German Klöten, the Welsh ceillion.