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In a recent podcast I heard: "pedirse el cuerpo." It did not have a transcript so, forgive me if I do not have it correct. The podcast was about the pleasures of reading. I did not have so much luck finding a definition in dictionaries.

I think I heard in another podcast that "no tengo cuerpo para ir a bodas" means "I do not feel like going to weddings". Is this the same?

I checked in DLE; it defines it as "desear/apetecer" - to want or feel like. This seems to fit. They put the phrase as "Pedirle a alguien el cuerpo algo". How does that work then? Could anyone provide examples of its use please?

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The DLE entry (within cuerpo) is pedirle a alguien el cuerpo algo. This is the only way in which one can cite a phrase like this generically. (Pedirse el cuerpo does not mean anything, but even if it did, it would not give that result when conjugated.)

The phrase employs the verb pedir in its usual syntax and is pretty much directly translatable into English. "El cuerpo me pide fiesta" means literally "The body asks me for party", that is, "My body demands partying". The things that "the body demands" can be varied: uncountable nouns like fiesta or pizza or descanso, countable nouns like una cerveza or una siesta, or infinitive phrases like salir or ir de parranda (you are seeing a theme there, I suppose).

In the first person singular we say "El cuerpo me pide", in the second person singular El cuerpo te pide, etc. It is possible to use the possessive instead of the indirect object pronoun and say "Mi cuerpo pide", "Tu cuerpo pide". It is rarer, but sanctioned by no less than Gloria Estefan.

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    Technically you could still say "pedirse el cuerpo" if you were somehow picking bodies, as in "me pido el cuerpo de la derecha", but it seems unlikely to appear in daily conversation
    – LordHieros
    Nov 4, 2020 at 12:21
  • Thanks. I understand how to use it now, a bit like" gustar" etc. However, in it's phrasal form/infinitive,I still find it strange. Where does the" algo" and "alguien" come into it? Also, the phrase seems to get reversed when it is conjugated?? Also, is there the expression for "tener cuerpo"to indicate that you want or do not want to do something?
    – Bluelion7
    Nov 4, 2020 at 21:20
  • You have to mention algo and alguien so that the person who reads it in this generic form understands which (let's say) slots there are in the structure, and how one has to fill them. Otherwise you cannot go from "pedir el cuerpo" to "el cuerpo me pide fiesta" in any way. ("Pedirse" wouldn't work but it would also give the impression that the verb is reflexive, which it isn't.)
    – pablodf76
    Nov 4, 2020 at 22:33
  • I don't know the expression "tener cuerpo" and it doesn't appear in the dictionary. Maybe it's literal: "to have a body (of a certain kind)". A related one is "darle el cuerpo a uno para algo" (again the generic pronouns!) which means "to have a body that is up to some thing".
    – pablodf76
    Nov 4, 2020 at 22:35
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    @Bluelion7 think of it as "my body asks me (for/to do) something". A alguien refers to me, and algo refers to something.
    – wimi
    Nov 5, 2020 at 10:38

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