Spanish Expression of the Day: ¡Menos mal!
Want to express relief in Spanish? Then make sure to add these two words to your speech, because they’re used all the time in Spain.
Menos mal means ‘less evil, wrong or harm’ in its most literal sense, but in reality it’s used as an interjection in a similar way to ‘thank goodness’ in English.
So if you want to express relief that you caught your flight even though you were late to the airport, you’d say ¡Menos mal!, or if you remembered to take the laundry in before it started raining, you’d again exclaim ¡Menos mal!.
It’s a slightly less emphatic way of expressing relief than saying ‘Thank God’, which in Spanish is also ¡Gracias a Dios!.
A similar but less common synonym of ¡Menos mal! is ¡Qué alivio!, meaning ‘What a relief!’.
You can also use menos mal que to add more detail about what you’re relieved about. It’s like saying ‘it’s a good thing that..’ in English.
For example, if you want to say ‘it’s a good jobthat the plate didn’t break’, you’d say menos mal que no se rompió el plato, or to say ‘it’s a good thing you came’ you’d say menos mal que viniste.
Even though the statement is preceded by a que, it’s not the subjunctive, so don’t worry about more complicated verb conjugations.
Menos mal is a standard interjection which is used all the time in Spanish and which is neither colloquial nor formal.
Try not to confuse it with the words menos malo/mala, which means ‘less bad’.
There you have it, where something bad that was expected to happen doesn’t happen, remember to use menos mal.
And if you want to put a positive twist on something bad that does happen, in Spanish there’s the expression no hay mal que por bien no venga, a bit like saying ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ or a ‘blessing in disguise’.
Examples:
¿Has aprobado el examen? ¡Menos mal!
You passed the exam? Thank goodness!
Menos mal que sabes lo que haces.
It’s a good job that you know what you’re doing.