Things you do
Verbs and verb phrases for the small social moves — covering for a friend, backing out, roasting someone, playing dumb.
Things you do
About things you do
Hacer el paro, rajarse, batear, hacerse pato, echar carrilla, dar el avión. These are the phrases for things people do to each other, and they are where Mexican Spanish gets genuinely expressive — there is a specific verb for nodding along to someone purely to get them to stop talking.
Because they are verbs, the hard part is not the meaning, it is the shape. You will hear me hizo el paro long before you hear hacer el paro, and the reflexive and pronoun forms are where learners stall. So these pages show the phrase as it is actually said, conjugated, in the person you will need.
Verbs that name a social act, not an action
What holds this category together is that every phrase names something you do to or with another person, rather than something you do in the world. Backing out, covering for somebody, chatting them up, letting them down gently. The physical content is close to zero; the social content is the whole thing.
That makes them harder to look up than ordinary verbs, because a dictionary gives you the mechanics and misses the etiquette. Knowing the words inside a phrase for cancelling tells you nothing about how much notice is expected, whether a reason is required, or what happens if you leave the reschedule vague. The phrase is a script, and the script has rules.
It also makes them unusually high-value. These are the phrases that decide whether people invite you a second time. Learners tend to prioritise nouns and end up able to name everything in a room while unable to decline an invitation without causing a small injury.
Things you do — common questions
Why are these harder than normal verbs?
Because the meaning sits in the etiquette rather than the action. A dictionary gives you the mechanics of a phrase for cancelling; it does not tell you how much notice is expected, and that is what people actually judge.
Which of these matters most for daily life?
Anything to do with making, changing or cancelling plans. That is the machinery of a social life, and getting it wrong is the quickest way to stop being invited.
Can I translate these directly from English?
Rarely well. English social scripts run on explicitness and apology; Mexican ones run on softness and indirection. A literal translation is usually understandable and lands heavier than you meant.
Do these change between formal and casual settings?
The structure holds and the vocabulary shifts. The same move has a version for friends and a version for work, and mixing them up is more noticeable than a grammar mistake.