alburear

A distinctly Mexican verb for playing albur — a rapid-fire verbal duel built on double meanings, almost always with a sexual undertone, prized as a display of wit. It's a real cultural institution in Mexico, not just wordplay in the abstract, and largely untranslatable outside that context.

• Los albañiles alburearon toda la tarde mientras trabajaban. — The construction workers traded albures all afternoon while they worked.
• Se le da muy bien alburear, siempre gana. — He's really good at albur wordplay, he always wins.
• En algunas fiestas, alburear es casi un deporte. — At some parties, playing albur is almost a sport.

Assuming alburear just means 'to joke around' — it specifically refers to the structured double-entendre wordplay of the albur, a skill with its own rules and history, not casual joking in general.

• book Picardía mexicana — Armando Jiménez's bestseller, first published in 1960 and often called "la biblia del albur mexicano," compiled jokes, slang, and albures from Mexican popular culture; it went through more than 140 editions and sold over 4 million copies.