To leave yourself open — to invite trouble by being careless.
The single most Colombian piece of advice there is. Phone out on a busy street, laptop on a café table, counting cash in public — that is dando papaya. It is said as a warning and also as a shrug afterwards: you got robbed because you gave papaya. The flip side, *papaya puesta, papaya partida*, means if you offer it, expect it taken.
Literally "to give papaya." The full proverb is *no dar papaya*: if you hold out something soft and sweet, someone will take it.
It quietly puts the blame on the victim, so it can sting if someone has just been robbed.
Reading a definition isn't the same as saying it to someone. Lingo Kaiava is a voice tutor set to Colombian Spanish — it uses dar papaya the way locals do, corrects you in the moment, and never "fixes" the way real people actually talk into textbook Colombian Spanish.
Practice Colombian Spanish free →
Free to start. No signup for your first conversation.