Today Cantinflas Would Be 100-Years-Old

If he still lived today, Mario Moreno, AKA "Cantinflas," would be 100-years-old. But he's not; he died in 1993, almost 20-years ago.

To call Cantinflas a mere "actor" or "entertainer" would be a huge understatement. Did you know cantinflear was accepted as a real word by the Real Academia Española back in 1992? Many actors and entertainers have made it to the Hollywood Walk Of Fame but how many of them ever landed a word in the Spanish dictionary? None, really. That means that reducing Cantiflas to anything but a cultural phenomenon would, again, be a huge understatement.

But what exactly does cantinflear mean? In short, to be redundant with whatever it is you're trying to say. That was Cantinflas' schitck and he basically built his career around it. But it wasn't just random ranting; just like Tin Tan, another clever wordsmith from the same era, Cantinflas' "nonsense" someway, somehow, made sense:

And if it didn't make sense, well, it made you laugh.

Source: El Universal