San Marcos ronrón de tablita

ronrón (de tablita)

Source term: ronrón

ronrón: Honduran Spanish, onomatopoeic for a droning buzz; the same word names the June beetle (Phyllophaga spp.) whose hum the toy imitates, and an unrelated two-hole button spinner.

In San Marcos, Santa Bárbara — a town the Honduran government named the country's 'capital of traditional games' — a spring festival keeps a plank-and-string toy called ronrón de tablita alive alongside stone jacks, stilt races, and spinning tops. Swing it in circles on its cord and it rises into a buzzing hum, the same word, ronrón, naming both the toy and the beetle whose drone it imitates. Founded in 2000 by Nelson Medina to save the games of his own childhood, the festival now draws crowds every May.

Juego y juguete que consiste en colocar en un extremo de una tablita una cuerda, que al impulsarla en círculos, provoca un zumbido parecido al del abejorro o ronrón.

A game and toy that consists of tying a cord to one end of a small board; swinging it in circles produces a buzz like that of a bumblebee or the ronrón beetle.

Real Academia Española / ASALE, Diccionario de americanismos (2010), s.v. 'ronrón,' sense I.2 (Honduras).

Particulars

Object

A small board pierced or slotted at one end and threaded with a cord.

Function

Swung in circles by its cord until it produces a rising buzz likened to a bumblebee or to the beetle also called ronrón; kept alive today in San Marcos's annual traditional-games festival alongside jacks, stilts, and other childhood pastimes.