Losing Oil

Used to describe a person whose behavior is erratic or impossible to count on. The literal meaning (a shot in the air) conveys the sense of something going nowhere with no clear aim.

The verb tapar (to cover) combined with pasársela + gerund (to spend all one's time doing something) produces this vivid idiom. Conveys sustained, exhausting effort to protect or compensate for another person.

Colorful Rioplatense idiom drawn from machinery imagery, when an engine loses oil, it starts to break down. Applied to people, it describes gradual mental or emotional deterioration in an empathetic rather than clinical tone.

Very Rioplatense. Literally means to screw/coil something, but colloquially describes the mental state of overthinking, going in circles, or getting drawn into a complicated discussion.